“You played fricking awesome!”

Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt won a thrilling 6-5 playoff against Korea to qualify Australian curling for its first trip to the Olympic Winter Games.

“You played fricking awesome!” exclaimed Hewitt, as he hugged his mixed doubles partner after the match at the Olympic Qualifying Event in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. “You saved us the whole game.”

The Australians overcame a rocky and fortunate fifth end—Korea looked to be heading for a three-count when Gill made an improbable wrong-way double takeout to force a single—to score a huge three with their power play in the sixth end for a 5-4 lead.

A Gill near-freeze on her last stone of the seventh end forced Korea’s Kim Min-Ji to throw a pick for a single point, and it was all tied coming home.

Kim didn’t place her first stone of the final end well, Hewitt later made a double-peel, and Gill faced a Korean counter in the back four-foot with her last stone. After considering an outturn draw, a chat with coach John Morris saw her switch to the inturn side and her stone glided into the Korean counter for the winning point.

Gill was emotional after the game. “Oh my God, I’m shaking,” she said.

Just as Hewitt and Gill have been coached by Canada’s John Morris—the pair relocated to Alberta this season—Hewitt’s father Steve was coached in the mid-2000s by Morris’ father Earle.

“It’s amazing,” said Hewitt. “I called Tahli about three and half years ago and said, ‘look, do you want to make a run at these Olympics?’ We’ve been working so hard over the past few months and the past couple of years, and it’s all paid off.

"We’ve had so much support from home, we can’t thank them enough. We’ve been away from home for three months and two days, and we’re going straight back to Canada for a few more months.”

In the second and final Olympic qualifier for Beijing’s mixed doubles competition, Vicky Persinger and Chris Plys of the United States will take on Russian veterans Anna Sidorova and Aleksei Timofeev.