Winter Olympics 2014: Despondent Brits left to fight for bronze in curling as they pay for slow start

 
Robin Scott-Elliot19 February 2014

Britain face a play-off for bronze tomorrow against Switzerland after losing 6-4 to Canada in this morning’s women’s curling semi-final.

A tense contest was settled when the Canadian skip Jennifer Jones slid the final stone into the middle of the house and threw both arms in the air in celebration.

A poor opening end allowed Canada to seize a two-shot advantage which, under the immaculate direction of Jones, they never looked like squandering. On the next they stole another shot and from there it was catch-up curling for Britain against the best rink in the world.

Britain stayed in touch to take it to the final end and the final stone — skip Eve Muirhead even raised a glimmer of hope with her final shot, leaving Britain with three stones on the house. But Jones’s rink have not lost in this tournament and arrived here ranked No1 in the world. Nervelessly she slid it into place and the Canadian celebrations begun.

Muirhead, 23, said: “I’m gutted and so are all the girls. I came into this tournament saying I wanted no regrets and we gave everything we could in that game. I’m proud of the girls and we’ve still got a chance of a medal. I don’t want to come away without a medal around my neck.

“Our backs were against the wall but we gave it back to them and it was a high quality game. We trained hard and we’ll give the next match our all.”

Our favourite pictures and moments from the Winter Olympics 2014 in Sochi

1/101

A year ago Muirhead had skipped her rink past Canada en route to becoming the youngest woman to win the world championships but that was a different Canadian line-up, and one lacking Jones.

The lawyer from Winnipeg was the pivotal figure. Any time one of her team-mates made an error she shut down Britain’s chances. From 3-0 down after that second end steal, coolly executed by Jones, Muirhead edged her team back into it.

At the halfway point it was 4-3 to Canada but then came three scoreless ends when Britain had the hammer — the crucial final stone of the end — and failed to score. It left them to take one shot on the ninth and hand the hammer back to Canada for the final end, and there was no way Jones was going to let that slip.

With Dave Murdoch’s men playing Sweden in their semi-final this afternoon, Britain can still make this their most successful Winter Olympics for 90 years, surpassing the four-medal haul of 1924.

So far, Team GB’s medals here in Sochi have come from skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold and Jenny Jones, who took bronze in the snowboard slopestyle.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT