Curling: Scots stay in medal hunt

THE Scottish men beat Norway by 8-4 to record their sixth win in the round-robin section of the Ford World Men’s Curling Championship here in Victoria, Canada.

Earlier they had suffered an unexpected setback when they lost by 6-8 to USA. Previous to that, they had beaten Russia 6-4.

Against Norway, the Scots started well, scoring two in the first end, and stealing a single in the second for a 3-0 lead. There was no way back for the Norwegians after that, and they conceded after eight ends.

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Afterwards, Scotland skip David Murdoch said: “We thought we’d really need to get up for this game. It was our intention to put Norway down to four losses and to really come out firing – showing that will to win and showing the form we’re playing, because we’ve been playing really well.”

In the USA game, the Americans gave themselves the perfect start, scoring two points in the first end. But Murdoch took his team into a 5-4 lead when he scored three in the fourth end.

The Americans levelled with a single score in the fifth end, but the Scots nosed ahead in the sixth with a single score. The Scots deliberately blanked the ninth end with the scores at 6-6, to keep last stone and complete what should have been a routine win. But Murdoch was wide and failed to remove the US stone, giving the Americans a steal of two points and an 8-6 win. Afterwards, still stunned at what had just happened, Murdoch said: “We just got ourselves in a bit of a mess in the last end. That was frustrating, because we bossed the entire game. But that’s a bad loss.”

Earlier, the Scots were in control against Russia. The turning point came in the fifth end, when skip Murdoch cleared up a busy house with his first stone and Russian skip Andrey Drozdov messed up his last effort to give Scotland a steal of three. In the tenth end, Murdoch hit out a Russian stone in the house to leave one of his own counting for the one point that gave his team a 6-4 win.

This was Scotland’s fifth win so far, and afterwards, Murdoch said: “We’re doing a lot of things right now.”

The Scots now face Sweden, who, like Scotland, are still in the mix for weekend medal games.

Norberg set for retirement

SWEDEN’S Anette Norberg, is retiring from the sport and will not compete in the Sochi Olympics next year.

The 46-year-old double Olympic champion says she no longer feels motivated to keep going and wants to give Sweden a chance to find a replacement in time for Sochi.

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Norberg said: “Curling has been my life for so many years so, of course, I will miss it a lot. But life as a curling player is very demanding today, and I feel that I lack the time and the commitment required.”

Norberg won Olympic gold medals in 2006 and 2010, three world championships and seven European championships from 1988 to 2011.