Scots beat USA to maintain fine form

EVE Muirhead's Scottish women continued their excellent progress towards the weekend medal games with their seventh successive victory at the World Women's Curling Championship in Swift Current, Canada, beating third-placed USA by 7-4.

This result gives Scotland an overall won eight, lost one round-robin record and they now share the lead with hosts Canada, the team they will face in their last round-robin game.

Before that, both leaders have to play Russia, who are fighting for survival, but if results go the way of the form book, Canada and Scotland will go into the one versus two game of curling's Page play-off system, with the winner going straight to Sunday's final and the loser having a second chance via the sole semi-final. In the game against the Americans, USA started with last stone advantage, and they used this to score one in the second end, after blanking the first. Scotland then took three in the third end for a 3-1 lead.

After USA took a single from the fourth, Muirhead had a simple draw for one in the fifth and then the Scots stole a single in the sixth for a 5-2 lead.

A further two in the eighth, when a spectacular Muirhead double removed USA stones from both the front and the rear of the 12-foot ring, eventually proved enough for victory, when after scoring just one in the ninth, USA conceded in the tenth.

Afterwards, Muirhead said: "Our goal was to get into the Page 1-2 and that's definitely where we want to go. We've got two crucial games to go and we've just got to take these games the way we've taken all the others. We're all playing well and really liking the ice. We're all throwing well and that's what a good team has to do".

Speaking specifically about her USA win, she added: "America have been doing well and they're one of the top teams that we knew we had to beat. That shows we're a good team, as good as any team out there.

"Coming off the back of the Olympics, we came here to play the way we know that we can, and we're doing that."