Curling: Scotland in medals hunt after two wins

SCOTLAND’s women guaranteed themselves a place in the weekend medal games at the Titlis Glacier Mountain World Women’s Curling Championship here in Riga, Latvia with a further two wins in yesterday’s round-robin action.

In the morning they beat Denmark 8-6 and came back on to the ice in the evening session to overcome Italy 8-4. At the same time, Sweden beat 
Russia 10-3 to continue sharing the lead with Scotland, and no matter what happens in today’s last three round-robin sessions both of them are now in the play-offs.

By Scottish skip Eve Muirhead’s own admission, the Scots were not at their best against Denmark.

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The Danes took the early lead with a 2 in the second end, but then Muirhead drew to score a 3 in the third end. She then scored another 3 in the seventh to 
finally turn the game in the Scots’ favour and set them on their way to their 8-6 victory.

Afterwards, she said: “We just weren’t as sharp as we had been yesterday. In any major championships you can’t have slack games. It wasn’t bad – we knew it was always going to be tough against Denmark, but overall, we’re still happy.”

Against Italy, the Scots scored a 1 in the opening end and then Italy’s Diana Gaspari played a delicate tap on a Scottish stone to score a 2 in the second. Muirhead drew for two shots in the third end and then, after Italy had blanked the fourth, the Scots had single steals in each of the fifth and sixth ends.

Good Scottish stone positioning in the seventh forced Italy to draw for a 1 and give Scots last stone in the eighth, where they scored a 2 for an 8-3 lead.

The Scots once again forced Italy to take a 1 in the ninth, and then ran the Italians out of stones in the tenth for their win.

A delighted Muirhead said: “It was solid out there and that’s guaranteed us a play-off slot. That was our first goal, so I’m 
really chuffed and I know the rest of the girls are as well.

“Now we’ve just got to concentrate, we want to get into the right play-off, the one-two play-off. If we play the way we did there we can win two games tomorrow.”

The Scots conclude their round-robin campaign today against Russia and then USA.

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Sweden won their first game against Japan 9-4, and skip Margaretha Sigfridsson said: “I think it’s one of the best championships we’ve had. We had a really good championship in Moscow (European Championships 2011), but this is certainly the best Worlds we’ve had.”