By the time the crowd at the Gangneung Curling Centre had got to their feet to celebrate South Korea’s Garlic Girls reaching their first Olympic curling final by beating Japan, the British team had already departed. They had talked a good game before their semi-final against Sweden, but instead they stunk the joint out.
Eve Muirhead had promised she would thrive under the slow‑burning tension of an Olympic curling semi‑final. But at the crucial point of the match, with the team 5-3 down in the seventh end, the GB skip missed two difficult but makable shots. Suddenly Sweden were 8-3 ahead and the game was gone. If anything their 10-5 defeat flattered Britain.
Now Muirhead and her team face a different sort of pressure. Not only do they need to beat Japan on Saturday in the play-off for third place to avoid searching questions about their £5.6m funding from UK Sport, a bronze medal is also needed to ensure Team GB meets its medal target of five for these Games.
You would have expected some soul-searching from the British team given the poor display. Instead there was too much talk of “taking the positives” – including the fact that four years ago Britain lost against Canada in the semi‑finals in Sochi before coming back to take bronze against Switzerland.
“I definitely don’t think it can harm us, what we went through four years ago,” Muirhead said. “As a team we know exactly what we did and we learned a lot four years ago and hopefully we will play well for that bronze medal.”
Muirhead also insisted she had not succumbed to the pressure when she missed two shots at 5-3 down. “Of course the seventh end, if my first stone could have just got past we looked good for three but it didn’t,” she said. “Then it was a tough draw. Of course as a skip you have to make these shots and if not against a strong team you are always going to be on the back foot.
“There was a pressure there and we play well under the pressure. But sometimes you can’t make all the shots. It was a very tough shot. I am gutted I missed those kind of draws but it happens.”
Next up is Japan, with Muirhead expecting a tough match. “Every team is tough, and Japan lost a world final a couple of years ago,” she said. “We are going to come here looking for the bronze medal. We just need to focus on ourselves.”
Muirhead also bristled at suggestions that with Britain’s curlers being funded at a much higher level than their rivals they should have done better. “I have never said I am coming here just for the gold,” she said.
“I have trained hard over the last four years to come to the Olympics and as a team we come out and play the best we can. We came up short against a very good Swedish team but we did ourselves proud out there. As a team we battled hard.”
While needing to claim bronze to hit the medal target might be seen to be putting extra pressure on the British team, Muirhead denied that was the case. “I don’t think about things like that. I think we will take some time as it is a disappointing loss. We learn what we could do better.”
Meanwhile the coach Glenn Howard insisted his team had been unlucky. “It came down to a couple of shots in the seventh end,” he said. “We had an unfortunate deuce in six. Anna Hasselborg made a pistol to get her two. We finally got a miss out of Anna in the seventh which was few and far between because our Anna made a perfect hit and roll.
“Then Evie comes in and it just ticks the one on the top four feet. If that gets by we get at least probably two to tie the game. It hits to a spot where Anna makes a pistol double. Evie tried to follow it down, feather ticked the guard and they stole 3. So it went from 5-5 to 8-3 and that’s a pretty big hill to get back. If Evie’s first gets by it’s a different story. That’s how close it is.”
However, Howard insisted the team can come back from their crushing defeat against Sweden. “Picking them up won’t be a problem. Obviously there will be some disappointment right. But they will want to win that bronze medal.”
