DAVID Murdoch's curlers, still upset at missing out on the chance to go for gold, decided yesterday that the best thing to do the morning after the night before was get back onto the ice here in Pinerolo.
The hurt of Wednesday's dramatic last-stone loss to Finland in their semi-final was still fresh, but, on the advice of team psychologist Steve Bannan, Murdoch led his Great Britain team in a full early-morning practice session on the sheet of ice tha
t will be used for their bronze-medal play-off game against the USA this afternoon. By contrast, the Americans declined to take advantage of their practice opportunity.
National coach Mike Hay, who supervised the session, said: "We were all still a bit sore this morning, but we thought it best to get back in there and put yesterday behind us. We had a couple of good drills and we wanted to make sure we were familiar with this sheet again. We don't want to leave any detail uncovered."
In Wednesday night's drama, Murdoch played a brilliant last end and final stone to give Finland skip Markku Uusipaavalniemi the toughest of draw shots for victory. But, with the crowd holding their breath, the Finn's stone landed exactly on the button to win them the chance for golden glory and condemn Murdoch, Euan Byers, Warwick Smith and Ewan MacDonald to the consolation bronze-medal game. The other semi-final was much less tense, with Canada scoring five in the ninth to beat USA by 11-5.
After the game, the stunned British team took half-an-hour to exit the arena, completely downhearted. Since then, their support team have been working hard to help Murdoch re-focus on today's challenge. "In a way, this is a horrible game to be in, but it's an opportunity to win an Olympic medal," added Hay. "We don't want to go away empty-handed."
After a bright start to their campaign, the British team have lost three games in a row, including an 8-9 defeat by USA's Pete Fenson in their second-last round-robin game. In that game, Murdoch's men had an uncharacteristic complete miss in their opening end and gave up four shots in the third to go 6-1 down.
To their credit, the team fought back, but they left themselves too much to do and eventually lost, so one of their main targets for today will be not to give away any big ends. At the time, Murdoch dismissed that defeat as "a blip" and is he confident they can return with a medal.
"We're still playing well," said the skip. "We just haven't had that little bit of luck. We are still going into an Olympic medal match and we have to make sure we are going home with a medal after all this because that is what we came here to do.
"I think we have done everything possible and trained as hard as possible and the whole team has played with a lot of confidence and spirit. Playing in the final would have been the biggest thing ever and it is going to be a huge test of our team to get over the disappointment and make sure we come out firing."
Although the bronze-medal game does not start until this afternoon, USA have already struck the first blow, winning the toss to allow them to start the game with crucial last-stone advantage. Not having last stone in the semi-finals was a major contributor to Murdoch's loss on Wednesday, as he spent all the game chasing the Finnish. He'll be out to turn this advantage around as soon as possible today. "We're not changing our game plan for this one" promised Hay.
In the women's event, meanwhile, Sweden's Anette Norberg completed a unique hat-trick of curling crowns when she added Winter Olympic gold to her current European and World titles, beating Switzerland's Mirjam Ott by 7-6 in last night's final.
In a tense game, Ott took Norberg all the way to an extra end when the Swiss tapped out a Swedish counter with their last stone in the tenth to score two and level the game. But Norberg's team kept control of the extra end despite strong Swiss pressure, and, with last-stone advantage, Norberg took out two Swiss stones while keeping her own last stone in the house to score the one point she needed for her hat-trick of titles.
"It's an amazing feeling," said Swedish lead Anna Svared. "The team really deserved it, we so deserved it because we are mentally so strong and have the best team spirit. We knew we were going to win."
Earlier yesterday, Canada's Shannon Kleibrink won a one-sided bronze-medal play-off game by 11-5 against Norway's Dordi Nordby. This game was virtually all over after just two ends when Canada followed up an opening-end score of four with a single steal and a 5-0 lead. Norway finally conceded after the eighth end.
