CURLING: Muirhead stamps her authority in Scotland as victory earns double reward

EVE Muirhead again asserted her authority as the pre-eminent skip in Scottish and perhaps world curling as she led her rink to a 3-0 whitewash of Team Fleming at the European Championship play-downs at Perth’s Dewar’s Centre.

It was a victory made doubly important since, as well as ensuring that Team Muirhead will represent Scotland on home ice in the European Championships at Braehead Arena next month, it all but secured their place at the next Winter Olympics. Such is Muirhead’s status, Hannah Fleming’s team would almost certainly have had to beat their opponents in both this event and at the Scottish Championships this season to generate real doubt about their superiority.

There has been growing evidence that Fleming and colleagues Jen Dodds, Alice Spence and Vicky Wright are becoming capable, in the longer term, of offering a real challenge to Muirhead, who has been working with an overhauled team with Lauren Gray having joined them as lead while Kelly Schafer, formerly Wood, has flown over from Canada to deputise for the injured Anna Sloan.

At the Stockholm Ladies Cup a fortnight ago they even managed to go further than their compatriots in reaching the final when Team Muirhead was knocked out in qualifying.

However, that was the only time in four events this season that the world No 4 ranked team has failed to reach a final and their response was emphatic as they headed back to the continent the following weekend to become the first Scots to win the Basel Masters.

They had beaten Fleming in the semi-finals in Switzerland and when they eased past them 9-3 in the first match of this best-of-five play-off it looked as if the younger women might still be a little overawed.

However the second match went the distance before they were beaten 7-5 and in the third, had Fleming managed a nose take-out with her final delivery at the third end with the scores at 2-2 she might have been on course for victory.

Such are curling’s margins that when it wrecked on a guard, however, she collected just one shot and while it remained hard fought thereafter, going to an extra end, two precision shots from Muirhead sealed a 9-7 win.

In the men’s event Scottish champions Team Brewster maintained their impressive momentum when they claimed an emphatic victory, shaking hands when 7-2 up after just seven ends of the first match of the best-of-three final against their skip’s fellow Winter Olympic silver medallists’ Team Murdoch.

It was their fourth successive win since losing the opening match of the round-robin section of the three-team competition to Dave Murdoch’s men, before they edged out last year’s winners of this event, Team Smith, in their second match.

Since then they have gone from strength to strength, beating Murdoch 6-3 the second time around and recording an impressive second win over Kyle Smith’s rink in securing that place in the final.