• Winter Olympics

GB women's curling team secure semi spot

ESPN staff
February 17, 2014
Muirhead was the focus as GB's women's curling team closed in on the semi-finals © Getty Images
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Great Britain's women's curling team have secured their place in the semi-finals at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, though the men face a play-off with Norway.

The women will play unbeaten Canada on Wednesday after beating Russia 9-6 and losing to Denmark 8-7.

Following their win in the early game, a combination of other results and win/loss records saw Eve Muirhead's team go through regardless of the outcome against Denmark. They failed to end the round robin stage with a win, though, letting a 7-4 lead slip as the Danes claimed the decisive extra end.

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Victory against Denmark would have seen Britain facing Sweden, a team they beat to win the world title in 2013, in the last four instead of the unbeaten Canadians - but Muirhead admitted she was relieved to just reach the semi-finals.

"We came out here with a couple of goals," she said. "Number one was to make the top four, so we're super, super happy. We didn't finish that game there, but I'd rather lose that game than lose a game on Wednesday.

"I like playing under pressure. I'm super competitive and the knockout stages are the stages I like. I know from past tournaments that these are the stages where we have really stepped up our game."

The men's curling team will contest a play-off for a semi-final berth after losing 6-5 to China. Norway went down 5-3 to Denmark in their final-round robin match. The two sides will face each other a 05:00 GMT on Tuesday, with the winner going on to meet world champions Sweden.

Elsewhere, Britain's Penny Coomes and Nick Buckland finished 10th in the ice dance with an overall score of 151.11. Meryl Davis and Charlie White won gold for the United States, beating Canada's defending champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir by 195.52 points to 190.99.

The seeding runs in the men's snowboardcross have been cancelled due to heavy fog at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park.

The 39 competitors will instead move automatically to the elimination round, with the seedings based on the world rankings. There will be seven heats of five riders each and one heat of four. The top three in each will advance to the quarter-finals.

This article will be updated throughout day 10 of the Winter Olympics. Click here for a round-up of day nine.

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