BEIJING — Chris Plys had never been to Beijing's National Aquatic Centre, but he felt like he knew the place. On the wall of his office in Duluth, Minn., he has a signed photo of swimmer Michael Phelps at the 2008 Summer Olympics, racing to one of his eight gold medals in the venue called the Water Cube.
That building was rechristened the Ice Cube when it was designated as the curling arena for the Beijing Winter Games. Plys and his mixed doubles partner, Vicky Persinger, made their own mark there on Wednesday. In the first event of the Beijing Olympics, they delivered a 6-5 victory over Australia to kick off the round-robin portion of the tournament.
The game was taut throughout. In Australia's first-ever Olympic curling match, Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt scored three points in the sixth end to grab a 5-3 lead. Persinger, who missed a double takeout in that end, converted that same shot in the seventh to pull the Americans into a 5-5 tie with one end remaining.
