Curling: Muirhead and Murdoch open brightly but slip back in Moscow

Both of Scotland’s teams in the Le Gruyère European Championships, being held in Moscow, had opening-round wins but have not had everything their own way since then.

In their opener, the Scottish women were down against Norway as they started the last end, but skip Eve Muirhead put enough pressure on her opponent to make Norwegian skip Linn Githmark push her final stone through the house and give Scotland a steal of three and an unlikely 8-6 win. However, in their next game, the Scottish women could not cope with the ice or their opponents and went down to a thumping 2-12 loss to Denmark in just six ends.

The Scottish women’s third game was against unbeaten Sweden yesterday afternoon and they were down for most of that, having given up two shots in the third end and three in the fifth. They made a brief revival to score two in the ninth but they were still 5-8 down as they started to play the tenth. However, before finishing the end, the Scots ran out of the time allotted for each game, and therefore forfeited the result.

The men, led by two-times world champion David Murdoch, have fared better. They controlled their opener against Italy to eventually win by 6-5, and did the same against Switzerland, whom they beat by the same score. However, their run came to an end when they came against Germany yesterday evening and, after giving up a score of three in the fifth end, followed by consecutive single steals in the sixth and seventh, to go 3-7 down, they left themselves too much to do and finally lost by 6-10.

The round-robin section of the tournament continues throughout the week, with the Scottish women facing the Czech Republic next, while the men are against defending champions Norway.

RESULTS: WOMEN. Round 1: Scotland 8, Norway 6; Italy 8 Switzerland 4; Denmark 6, Sweden 9; Germany 7, Latvia 5; Russia 10, Czech Republic 12 (extra end).

Round 2: Russia 10, Italy 5; Scotland 2, Denmark 12; Switzerland 5, Germany 7; Sweden 12, Czech Republic 0; Norway 6, Latvia 8.

Round 3: Switzerland 9, Czech Republic 7 (extra end); Russia 8, Germany 3; Italy 11, Latvia 4; Denmark 11, Norway 2; Sweden beat Scotland (Game defaulted by Scotland).

Standings after 3 rounds: Sweden won 3,lost 0; Denmark, Germany, Italy, Russia 2-1; Czech Republic, Latvia, Scotland, Switzerland 1-2; Norway 0-3.

MEN. Round 1: Switzerland 7, Czech Republic 3; Sweden 5, Germany 7; Latvia 6, Norway 5; France 3, Denmark 11; Italy 5, Scotland 6.

Round 2: Denmark 7, Latvia 3; Norway 6, Czech Republic 3; Scotland 6, Switzerland 5; Germany 7, Italy 4; Sweden 8, France 2.

Round 3: Germany 10, Scotland 6; Italy 4, France 7; Sweden 8, Denmark 3; Latvia 8, Czech Republic 11; Switzerland 5, Norway 9.

Standings after 3 rounds: Germany won 3,lost 0; Denmark, Norway, Scotland, Sweden 2-1; Czech Republic, France, Latvia, Switzerland 1-2; Italy 0-3.