Olympic progression taken out of Team GB's hands

Hailey Duff and Vicky Wright compete against Team China at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images

The two, part of skipper Eve Muirhead’s rink, knew victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning against hosts China was a must to keep progression out of the round robin phase and into the semi-finals in their own hands.

Sadly they lost out 8-4 and now know they have to beat Russia on Thursday, that game being played as we were going to press, and hope results elsewhere go their way to advance.

Victory over bottom of the table Russia in their final match could still be enough, but only if play-off rivals Japan and Korea lose one of the two matches that both of them still have to play.

"It's a little frustrating,” said skip Muirhead, who led Wright, Jen Dodds and Duff to victory at the European Championships in their last competitive pre-Olympic outing.

“We are playing really well as a team and we've had some great performances since winning the Europeans and coming through the qualifying tournament.

"It would have been nice to have had a bit more time together as a team but we've done what we can within the pandemic.

"We need to hope a few results go our way but, because we beat Japan and USA, we need to hope they drop a game.

"We need to come out and concentrate on our performance against Russia and focus on what we can do and then hope the curling Gods are on our side."