Eve Muirhead ends long wait for Olympic gold as GB beat Japan in Beijing final

Twenty years after Rhona Martin’s famous gold medal win in Salt Lake City, Eve Muirhead needed no ‘Stone of Destiny’ drama to achieve her lifelong ambition of leading her Great Britain women’s curling team to Olympic gold.

In her fourth Winter Games, the 31-year-old Muirhead and her team of Vicky Wright, Jennifer Dodds and Hailey Duff, plus alternate Mili Smith, dominated their final against Japan, ruthlessly sealing a 10-3 win – the joint-biggest winning margin in a final since the sport was reintroduced in 1998.

Muirhead’s defining moment came not amid the tension of an extra end, but with the final stone of the seventh end, when a superbly-executed raised take-out gave the Britons four for an 8-2 lead and effectively the victory.

It completed a remarkable journey for Muirhead, who was the youngest skip to win a curling world title in 2013 but had only a bronze medal from 2014 – and bronze medal heartbreak against the same Japanese team four years ago – to show for three Olympic quests to date.

Her road to Beijing itself had been scattered with setbacks, from failing to secure an initial place in Beijing through last year’s World Championships to a torrid start to the final qualifying tournament that saw them teetering on the brink of elimination.

Despite a comprehensive 8-2 win over the Japanese in the group stage, Muirhead’s team continued to flatter to deceive and had to rely on a win over the Russian Olympic Committee and a pair of other results going their way to squeeze through to the last four by virtue of a marginally better score in the draw shot challenge.

A miraculous comeback from a 4-0 first end deficit saw Muirhead sink Sweden in the semi-finals to clinch a place in her first Olympic final, and the