Team GB suffer at hands of home curlers
BySportsbeat
Published 17/02/2018 at 14:50 GMT
Scotland may be considered the home of curling but the Olympic ambitions of British skips Eve Muirhead and Kyle Smith suffered a blow at the hands of Korea yesterday.
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Image credit: Eurosport
Smith's rink went down tamely 11-5 and Muirhead's team surrendered their early lead to lose 7-4.
There is now no margin for error for Smith, who really should have done better against a Korean men's team who hadn't won a game before the encounter.
"We started really well again and then we had a dip in the middle of the game and you can't afford that," admitted coach Viktor Kjell.
"We've left too many half shots out there. We knew they were a good team and we didn't get up to standard."
The defeat leaves the men's team with two wins from five and they must surely beat next opponents Italy to stand a chance of progressing to the play-offs.
The situation is not quite so acute for Muirhead and the Korean skip Kim Eun Jung is many smart observers pick for gold here.
Muirhead's rink have played five, won three and lie joint fourth in the standings with four games to play.
They were leading 4-2 with three ends remaining but gave up two doubles and a single when the match was at the crunch stage.
"That was a difficult one, I feel like we kind of handed them a little bit," admitted Muirhead.
"There was a lot of great shots and unfortunately we were just on the wrong side of the inch at the end of the day and when's it's like that, that's curling.
"They played really well, they are a really good team but I do think we were slightly the better team.
"She [Kim EunJung] got pretty fortunate in the ninth end and when you have rubs like that against you it makes it pretty difficult."
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