Eve Muirhead closing in on ‘dream’ of landing elusive Olympic gold

Eve Muirhead overcame almost impossible odds to steer her Great Britain women’s curling team into the Olympic final in Beijing and fulfil an ambition that had threatened to elude her after over a decade at the top of her sport.

Team coach David Murdoch put her chances of salvaging victory at “less than 10 per cent” after shipping four shots in a disastrous opening end to defending Olympic champions Sweden, but they clawed back to clinch a thrilling 12-11 victory in an extra end.

It means Muirhead and her team of Vicky Wright, Jennifer Dodds and Hailey Duff have emulated their men’s team counterparts by guaranteeing at least a silver medal in Beijing and they will face Japan for the gold on Sunday.

“I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet because I’ve got almost every gold medal apart from the Olympic gold medal and it’s always been a dream of mine,” said an emotional Muirhead afterwards.

“Of course there have been times when you doubt whether you’ll be back and get that chance to play for gold. Sometimes you get home and want to throw your shoes in the cupboard and carry on doing something else.

“But we learned a lot from that, we stood up tall and we fought for our spot here. We showed we’ve got so much talent as a team, we’ve got so much drive and fight. It’s an absolute dream come true and I’m pretty speechless to be honest.”

Muirhead’s team rode an extraordinary rollercoaster against the experienced Swedes, appearing doomed to defeat after the first end as they faced the kind of deficit that is considered almost unrecoverable at the elite level of the game.

“To come back from 4-0 down was unbelievable – statistically that was almost gone,” said Murdoch, who steered his men’s team to a silver medal in Sochi in 2014.

“I