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Britain's curlers get mixed results

Eve Muirhead's side hold a slim hope of qualifying for the semi-finals © Getty Images

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Both of Great Britain's curling teams were in action in Vancouver on Sunday, with mixed results for the men and the women.

The boys were able to overcome Team USA in a low scoring match 4-2, taking their record to 4-3 for the round robin stage and enhancing their chances at reaching a semi-final. The Brits are equal third with two other teams in the standings, so the next matches against Germany and second-placed Norway are critical.

Despite falling behind 1-0 early, Team GB recovered with a two in the fifth end and stayed in control of the match from that point on.

Great Britain's female curlers slumped to a 10-6 defeat to Switzerland as their hopes of reaching the semi-finals were severely dented.

Switzerland, silver medallists in Turin, took an early lead, and a four on the fourth end left Eve Muirhead's side 8-1 down with a mountain to climb. They battled well, winning by three on the seventh end to claw their way back to 9-5, but they were unable to get back into the match.

After three wins from their opening four games, they now have won three and lost three. They must now win their remaining two fixtures against Norway and Canada, and hope other results go their way if they are to reach the semi-finals.

"We came onto a good game in the latter half, but too little too late," said Muirhead. "We couldn't have done much more to get back. We are not down and out of it yet, we need to win our two games and rely on other results going our way."

American Bode Miller finally secured gold on the slopes in the men's super combined. After a bronze medal in the downhill and silver in the Super-G, Miller completed the set with a superb slalom leg for a two-run combined time of two minutes, 44.92 seconds to take gold.

Croatia's Ivica Kostelic took the silver and bronze went to Switzerland's Silvan Zurbriggen. Britain's Ed Drake finished 29th with a combined time of two minutes, 50.91seconds. "I gave it as much as I could," Drake said. "It felt like I've been skiing well, but I just haven't been that quick. It was pretty cool though."

Elsewhere, it was Germany's day as they took four medals including two golds. Andre Lange and Kevin Kuske came out on top in the treacherous two-man bobsleigh event, winning gold ahead of compatriots Thomas Florschuetz and Richard Adjei. Bronze went to Russian pair Alexsandr Zubkov and Alexey Voevoda.

Team GB didn't compete in the second day of racing after they were disqualified for their crash in Saturday's heats.

At the women's cross-country 12.5km mass start biathlon, pocket-rocket Magdalena Neuner claimed gold by 5.5 seconds ahead of Russian Olga Zaitseva, while there were more medals for the European powerhouses, with Neuner's Germany team-mate Simone Hauswald grabbing bronze.

In the men's 15km mass start, gold went the way of straight-shooting Evgeny Ustyugov from Russia, but there were indeed other nations competing on Sunday, France's Martin Fourcade and Pavol Hurajt of Slovakia finishing second and third respectively. Fourcade came from way back in 28th after the first round of shooting to sneak in for silver.

Laid-back Swiss Michael Schmid won the inaugural ski cross event, which sends four competitors down the winding, jump-littered snowboard cross course simultaneously, while Andreas Matt of Austria came in second and Audun Groenvold snared bronze for Norway after capitalising on a trademark last-second crash at the course, this time from unlucky local hope Christopher Delbosco.

The traditional Dutch dominance of speed skating continued at the women's 1500m race, where Ireen Wust disappointed the parochial Canadian crowd by relegating Kristina Groves into the silver medal position. Martina Sablikova finished more than a second off Wust's lightning pace to grab a medal for the Czechs.

So there weren't many Brits in action on what the locals were calling 'Super Sunday' due to the all-important men's ice hockey battle royale between Canada and the United States.

Canadians reportedly polled that they would rather win the ice hockey gold than top the overall medal tally at the end of the Games, and over 15 million of the country's 32 million population were expected to tune it to watch their all-star team take on the Americans.

But Canada may will mark a day of official mourning on Monday after their plucky neighbours scored an upset 5-3 win, largely thanks to the heroics of goaltender Ryan Miller. The Canadians now face a couple of must-win games to stay in quarter-finals contention.

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