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British curlers crush Germany

The British curlers held the upper hand throughout their clash with Germany © Getty Images

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Day 11 in Pictures

Britain's men's curlers remain in the hunt for a medal after thrashing Germany 8-2. Skip David Murdoch controlled the match throughout and they now have five wins from eight games and know that victory against Norway will guarantee their place in the last four. Even if they lose to Norway they will enter the tie-breaker stage and Murdocch is happy with how they are performing.

"It was a really solid performance and we are hitting the type of form that we expect from ourselves and we are glad to see that it is happening," Murdoch said. "That is three really solid games now and the team usually does that by the time it gets to the end of the week at major championships and it is good to see.

"I think we are at least a tie-break spot but we aren't going to focus on that we, we will focus on getting another win tomorrow and that is for our semi-final berth.

"We put ourselves on the ropes but we have come out fighting, the Switzerland game cost us quite a lot but that is the situation we are in and we are dealing with it and playing well."

While the men look on course for a place in the last four, Eve Muirhead's women are on the brink if elimination after suffering a 9-8 defeat to Denmark. A mistake gifted Denmark victory and saw Muirhead break her broom in frustration.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are the toast of Canada after the home pair claimed gold in the Olympic ice dance.

Their performance to Mahler's Symphony No. 5 ended 34 years of European domination in the event, with their total of 221.57 points beating off Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White and forcing Russian world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin into bronze.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir thrilled the Vancouver crowd with gold in the Ice Dance © Getty Images

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"This is the moment we dreamed of. It's everything we dreamed of. We could not be happier," Moir said.

Brittain's Sinead and John Kerr put up a bold show to Linkin Park's Krwlng but could only claim eighth position, while Penny Coomes and Nicholas Buckland finished down in 20th.

Great Britain's Andrew Musgrave and Andrew Young were the only team that failed to finish in the semi-finals of the men's team cross country sprint. The duo will not have fond memories of Vancouver, with Musgrave's 51st in the individual 30km pursuit the best of their results.

"I didn't really ski that well today," the 17-year-old Young said. "My legs were really tired. It's been a bit frustrating as I didn't perform as well as I should have in the 15km and I was having the best race of my life in the sprint before I crashed.

"But I've got an experience that no else of my age in the world has got and that's definitely stands our cross-country team in good stead for future Games and future competitions."

Norway, second in the semi, were the winners of the team cross country sprint final after a late surge from Petter Northug pushed Germany down into silver ahead of Russia, who were third.

Austria claimed gold in the men's team ski jumping competition after a huge final jump of 146.5m from Gregor Schlierenzauer, who claimed bronze in both of the individual events.

The world and Olympic champions justified their billing as favourites to win comprehensively with a team of Wolfgang Loitzl, Andreas Kofler, Thomas Morgenstern and Schlierenzauer, each of whom jumped twice.

Germany, the only country to have won a medal on every day of these Games so far, kept up that record to finish a distant second. Norway picked bronze, while hosts Canada were eliminated in the first of the competition's two rounds.

Germany were the winners in the women's cross country team sprint, the team of Claudia Nystad and Evi Sachenbacher holding off the challenge of Sweden to win by 0.6 seconds after six laps of the one mile circuit. Russia finished three seconds back to snare bronze.

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