Team Muirhead go out in quarter-finals

Perthshire curler Eve Muirhead and her team were eliminated by their old Canadian rival Jennifer Jones in the quarter-finals of the National Grand Slam tournament in Conception Bay South, Newfoundland.

The 2013 world champion and her colleagues Lauren Gray, Vicki Chalmers and Jennifer Dodds played brilliantly to win three group games out of four, but were still underdogs against Jones, who won last year’s National and defeated Muirhead in the 2014 Olympic semis.

Team Jones also won last week’s Canada Cup, and they maintained their sparkling form with a 5-2 victory over the Scots.

Having nailed a series of clutch shots all week, Muirhead was only inches off target as the Canadians counted damaging singles at the fifth, sixth and seventh ends.

Meanwhile, Eve’s brothers Glen and Thomas face a battle to reach the semifinals of the Qinghai Elite tournament in Xining, China.

The Muirheads and fellow siblings, Kyle and Cammy Smith, won two of their first three round-robin matches but then lost 6-1 to Canadian Matt Dunstone. That leaves them in fifth place overall with only the top four rinks going through to the semis. They play US skip Andrew Stopera next.

Another Perth curler, Robin Brydone, reached yesterday’s Dumfries International semi-finals but went down 8-4 to the eventual winner, Dutchman Jaap Van Dorp.

Eve Muirhead exited at last eight stage.