Scotland settled for bronze at the World Curling Championships in Victoria and, while disappointed it wasn’t at least silver, skip David Murdoch is encouraged by the performance less than a year out from Sochi 2014.
Murdoch blew two chances to battle for a first world title for four years, after finishing top of the round-robin stage with eight wins and three defeats, losing to Sweden and then Canada in the play-offs.
That left Scotland in the bronze medal match with Denmark and Rasmus Stjerne in Canada who they managed to edge out 7-6 as a fight back from the Danish rink came just too late.
Scottish skip Murdoch opened with a score of two in the first end before Stjerne levelled with a double in the fifth however Scotland’s margin was restored in the sixth.
Denmark pulled it back to 4-4 in the seventh and then Murdoch made it 7-4 in the eighth although Stjerne played an outrageous multiple clear out to score two in the ninth.
Murdoch held on in the tenth as the five-man Scottish squad of himself, Tom Brewster, Scott Andrews, Michael Goodfellow and Greg Drummond were awarded bronze after a 7-6 win.
That keeps Scotland’s run of medalling at every men’s World Championships since 2008 going while for British winter sport in general it caps a remarkable season.
Five World Championship medals have now been won across the Winter Olympic disciplines with Eve Muirhead winning the women’s title in Riga last month.
Olympic silver medallist Shelley Rudman claimed the women’s skeleton title, James Woods won freestyle ski slopestyle silver and Elise Christie took short track speed skating 1000m bronze.
And Murdoch admitted his disappointment at failing to reach the final in Victoria was tempered by, not only bouncing back to deliver bronze, but also by doing so less than a year until the Olympics.
“It’s kind of disappointing not getting to the final. We had that chance but we didn’t grasp it. But we were really fired to come out and win that medal,” said Murdoch.
“We wanted to make sure we went home with a medal and it is just rewards for such a good week.
“This is the World Championships before the Olympics and you tend to find that the best teams are here and they’re starting to get to the top of their game.
“The fact that we can top the round robin and shoot some really good numbers shows that we’re doing a lot of things right.
“For us we’re going to take a lot of encouragement that we’re doing the right things and we know that when we bring our ‘A’ game we can beat anyone.
“We just need to be a bit more consistent.”
© Sportsbeat 2013