Olympic bronze medallist Eve Muirhead believes her Scottish rink are starting to peak at the European Curling Championships after bouncing back from an opening-day defeat to record two successive victories.
Skip Muirhead, who went unbeaten through the round-robin stages at last year’s Europeans before settling for silver, lost 7-6 to Denmark in her first match but responded to beat Latvia and the Czech Republic a day later.
Latvia were downed 10-5 first up and in their second match of the day the Scottish rink started strongly against the Czech Republic – finding themselves 5-1 ahead after just three ends in Champery.
The deficit had reduced to 5-3 by the fifth but progressed to 7-4 before the last stone in the ninth when Czech fourth player Kamila Mulacova was too strong with her draw and gave Muirhead a steal of one to make it 9-4.
Czech Republic skip Linda Klimova conceded the game there and then with Olympic bronze medallist from Sochi 2014 Muirhead talking up the performance of her rink in Champery as they start to build momentum during the round-robin stage.
“I thought that was our best performance yet. I thought we came out really strong. We were expecting this – for the opposition to play well in every game, but as a team I think we are getting better and better,” she said.
“I think we are getting to grips more with the ice. It’s calming down and we’re beginning to control things a lot better. We just need to nail these draw-weights and just make sure of our stone placement just that slightly bit better.
“As soon as you drop one behind the tee-line, you’re kind of chasing it. We just need to make sure we nail that.”
© Sportsbeat 2014