Scotland skip Eve Muirhead defeated reigning world champion and home hope Switzerland’s Binia Feltscher to take her winning streak to three at the European Curling Championships – then thanked the organisers for their scheduling.
Muirhead, who won Sochi Olympic bronze with Anna Sloan and Vicki Adams, who are in Champery with her in addition to newcomer Sarah Reid, beat Feltscher’s rink 7-5 to make it three wins from her last three matches after an opening loss.
Aside from a blip in the third end, which allowed the Swiss to level at 2-2, Muirhead’s Scottish rink were comfortable winners with a single steal in the fifth making it 4-2 while two were scored in the seventh with a well-judged nose-hit.
It eventually ended 7-5 with undefeated Russian Anna Sidorova, who made it four from four with a 10-2 victory over Latvia during the same session, next up – and Muirhead admitted they couldn’t have asked for a better time to play the host nation.
“We’re getting better and better, we’re just that little bit sharper and when we play like that we can get ahead of a lot of teams,” said Muirhead, who is currently third in the round-robin standings with Finland’s Sanna Puustinen also perfect from four.
“They’re the current world champions – they’re a good team and they played well. It’s good to get a win, especially against the home nation and I guess the best time to get them is in the morning without so many noisy fans.”
In the men’s tournament, two-time European champion and bronze medallist from Sochi 2014 Niklas Edin is unbeaten after four matches and leads the way while Scotland’s David Edwards is on two wins and two losses.
© Sportsbeat 2014