Eve and Co start medal bid on a high

Eve Muirhead has made a strong start to her gold medal bid at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

The Blair Atholl star guided her team to a comfortable opening day 10-3 win against Olympic athletes from Russia.

There was a setback in game two with a defeat to the USA. But the determined skip bounced back to see off China in dramatic fashion with Muirhead clinching victory with her last stone.

Muirhead was pleased with the win on day one and said:“To get off to a strong start like that at an Olympic Games is fantastic.

“For us, that stamps our authority down that Team GB are here and we are playing well.

“Of course there was going to be pre-tournament nerves. I’m not embarrassed to say I was nervous. I was really nervous.

“But we controlled ourselves, we’ve worked hard on managing to deal with high pressure situations.

“Now that game one is out the way we can relax a little bit and take other things in our stride.”

Team Muirhead coach Glenn Howard added:“It was a great start. Obviously you want to get out of the blocks with a win and that’s what I saw.

“There is so much experience with this team at a very young age and that is huge coming into an Olympics.

“There is nothing that is going to happen to them that they are not going to expect. That goes a long way in this competition.”

●Turn to page 50 to read how Guildtown’s Kyle Smith opened up his Winter Olympics.