Sweeping up: Eve Muirhead's curlers grab bronze to equal Britain’s best medal haul at a Winter Olympics

With her final shot of a rollercoaster two weeks, Eve Muirhead claimed curling bronze this morning and in so doing ensured Britain equalled their best-ever medal tally at a Winter Olympics.

It is Britain’s fourth medal of the Games after Lizzy Yarnold’s skeleton gold, snowboard bronze for Jenny Jones and David Murdoch’s gold or silver from tomorrow’s men’s curling final. It matches the four won in Chamonix in 1924 and may yet get surpass it.

Britain has two further medal chances over the final three days of the Games. Tomorrow night Elise Christie begins in the quarter-final of the 1000m short-track speed skating, her main event, and on Saturday night John Jackson will pilot the four-man bobsleigh around the curves of the Sanki Sliding Center. He was quickest in training this morning, 0.01sec ahead of the Russians.

“It is fantastic for Team GB,” said Muirhead of the combined achievement of the 56-strong British contingent here. “It means that [final] stone will stay with me for ever.”

For the bronze medal match against Switzerland, Muirhead’s rink of Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Claire Hamilton were watched by a who’s who of British Olympians assembled in the Ice Cube.

In all the British support could muster 13 Olympic gold medals between them, and one prospective gold medallist – Murdoch was up in the stands, the smile that has been stretched across his face since his winning stone last night still fixed in place. Murdoch and his rink had practised first thing this morning ahead of their final against Canada tomorrow before lending their support to their female team-mates.

Around him Seb Coe, David Hemery, Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent looked on and beneath them Rhona Howie, curling gold medallist a dozen years ago, sat in the coaches box behind the rink.

It was a cagey match; a scoreless opening end was followed by the Swiss using the hammer to take a two-shot lead in the second. Over the next two ends the teams traded points before a double on the fifth left it all square at the halfway point.

The Swiss edged ahead but Muirhead held her nerve, turning down a single shot on the seventh end and was rewarded with a two in the eighth, the second shot secured by a matter of millimetres. It sent Britain into the penultimate end with a single shot advantage.

The Swiss held the hammer but Sloan and Muirhead kept them to a shot. It meant Britain held the hammer for the final end and Muirhead rolled it confidently into the centre of the house to clinch a 6-5 victory.