After reaching the final with some tiebreak heroics in the semi-final win over Malaysia, it seemed only fitting that the final would go the same way.<\/p>\n
McKeown and Kelly were out of the traps fast in the first set as they took four shots in the third end on route to a 6-2 win.<\/p>\n
The English pair fought back in a tight second set to build a 3-0 lead, and they held on to win 4-2 and send the final to a one-end shootout.<\/p>\n
It was Kelly who came closest to the jack and Walker was unable to respond with his final bowl, which started the celebrations for a well-deserved gold medal.<\/p>\n
“We wish it wasn’t always an extra end but we played really well,” added McKeown.<\/p>\n
“We got a huge four shots early on and kicked on from there in the first set.<\/p>\n
“In the second set we lost a three early on in probably the worst end of the game, and then clawed our way back into it. <\/p>\n
“Gary had a chance to win the game with his last bowl and unfortunately just missed, but he played an absolute bomb on the tiebreak end to secure the win.”<\/p>\n
Kelly said he had to grab the chance “with both hands” with the decisive bowl of the match.<\/p>\n
“Obviously there’s nerves and there’s pressure, but you’ve just got to have belief and trust. <\/p>\n
“I’ve been lucky enough n my career that I’ve done it before, so you’ve just got to reach into those moments and believe. <\/p>\n
“You have to enjoy and embrace those moments as well, and thankfully I delivered.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After reaching the final with some tiebreak heroics in the semi-final win over Malaysia, it seemed only fitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}