Australia's history-making female bobsledders have ended their Torino 2006 campaign with an excellent fourth run and 14th place, although they were five seconds off the pace set by the winning German No.1 sled at Cesana Pariol.
Pilot Astrid Loch-Wilkinson and brakewoman Kylie Reed expressed the mixed emotions typical of many elite athletes, happy with their efforts and their results but thinking they could possibly have done a bit better.
"We came into this knowing that we would probably end up 15th and we ended up 14th. We were hoping for 12th, but ended up better than we expected, so we can't really complain about that," Reed said.
"I was a little disappointed in the pushing today. I pushed better yesterday, but overall I think we did really well today," the Perth-born, Melbourne-based 31-year-old added.
After clocking 58.53 and 58.85 seconds on their first two runs on Day 10, the pair put down runs of 59.00 and 58.73 seconds on a night which saw most sleds record slower times than they had the previous evening.
"I'm really rapt. We had a better day than yesterday," Loch-Wilkinson said.
"I'm really proud of the way Kylie pushed - the pushes were consistent - and I felt like I had two really good runs, especially the last one. I feel like I nailed it so it's a good way to finish and I'm happy with the result."
The 23-year-old former Sydney University soccer player, who took up bobsleigh just three years ago, conceded that an Australia team isn't quite in the same league as the Germans, Swiss, Canadians, Americans and even Italians, but that didn't stop them competing hard.
"For us to be here racing against the top 15 sleds in the world and to come 14th… Coming from Australia we're pretty much behind in everything so we shouldn't be anything short of proud of what we've achieved."
Former long jumper and national athletics representative Reed was just as enthusiastic about their achievement.
"We've put in three years of really hard work and we've pretty much done it on our own so to be here and get the result that we got today is just awesome. You can't beat it," she said.
The favourite, Germany-1 driven by Salt Lake 2002 silver medallist Sandra Kiriasis, claimed gold after clocking the fastest times on three of the four runs for an aggregate of 3:49.98. USA-1, pilot Shauna Rohbock and Valerie Fleming, was 0.71 of a second behind in the silver-medal position and Italy-1 took bronze, a further 0.32, just pipping Canada-1 by 0.05 of a second.
Meanwhile, the Aussies finished on such a high that they will be celebrating just as hard as the medallists.
"We're going to go out and support some of our other team-mates. We're going to take them out and have a bit of fun. We've waited a long time for this so we may as well enjoy it," Reed said.
Murray Brust / AOC
