WYOG 2012: Burrows takes gold and Djemal silver in Austria

From Charlie Talbot-Smith, Sportsbeat, in Innsbruck

THE SHORT track speed skating pair of Jack Burrows and Aydin Djemal made history on Saturday night as Great Britain's first-ever medal winners at the inaugural Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck.

HISTORY MAKERS: Jack Burrows and Aydin Djemal scooped Team GB's first medals of the Winter Youth Olympics in Austria

Burrows took gold in the mixed team 3000m relay as the quartet composed of himself, Jung Hyun Park from Korea and the Chinese pair of Xiucheng Lu and Aili Xu scorched to the win in a time of 4:21.656 minutes.

And Djemal wasn't far behind as he took silver with Mariya Dolgopolova from the Ukraine and another Chinese pairing of Hongzhi Xu and Chunyu Qu.

The mixed team relay combines skaters from different countries in an attempt to encourage interaction between nations.

And Burrows admitted that while the language barrier between him and his teammates had proved troublesome at the start, modern technology had come to his rescue.

"This just means so much to me, I can go home and be able to look at the medal whenever I want, I will train even harder and use it as motivation now," said Burrows.

"I had a translator program on my laptop which really helped us in training to communicate as a team but to be honest it wasn't all that hard.

"We managed to get in front and then held on for the medal, it's all about skating as hard as you can for your lap and a half and we did that four times each to take the win.

"I learnt a lot from the individual racing about how to skate at this level, my overtaking improved a lot and now for future competitions I know I have to be even better."

And Djemal, who earlier in the week broke the British U16 record over 1000m in the individual event, admitted that claiming a medal was something he could never have dreamed of coming into the games.

"I'm gobsmacked to be quite honest, I really didn't think coming here that I was going to get a medal," he added.

"This was supposed to be somewhere that we could come and learn about the sport so to have done that and to have won a medal is just amazing."

On a busy penultimate day in the Austrian Tyrol for Team GB alpine skier Pual Henderson rounded off his competition in the slalom event.

But the 17-year-old missed a gate when he looked well-placed for a top ten finish and that ruled him out of overall contention.

Over at the curling centre it was slightly improved news and Duncan Menzies, who skipped the quartet that crashed out at the group stage earlier in the week, made it through to the quarter-finals in the mixed doubles event with partner Taylor Anderson from USA.

But the semi-finals proved a bridge too far for the British-American pairing as they lost out 7-4 to a Japanese-Korean team.

Rachel Hannen and her partner Marek Cernovsky fell at the round of 16 in the morning session to a Russian-Japanese pairing.

And finally the ice dancing pair of Millie Paterson and Edward Carstairs finished of their Olympic debuts in the mixed team competition with a solid fifth-place finish.

The duo scored a personal best of 44.02 in their free routine, good enough for 8^th in their category.

The British Olympic Association prepares and leads British athletes at the summer, winter and youth Olympic Games. It works in partnership with sport National Governing Bodies to enhance Olympic success and is responsible for championing the Olympic values.www.olympics.org.uk

© Sportsbeat 2012