Winter Olympics: Women's curling team claim Great Britain's only gold

Eve Muirhead's women's curlers claimed Great Britain's only gold medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics with a sensational 10-3 victory over Japan on the final day of action in Beijing.

Muirhead, Vicky Wright, Jen Dodds, and Hailey Duff controlled the match and scored a superb four in the seventh end to effectively clinch the title.

It emulates gold won 20 years ago by Rhona Howie's team in Salt Lake City.

The gold follows the silver won by Bruce Mouat's rink in the men's event.

It means skip Muirhead finally has her gold medal at her fourth Olympics, while Wright, Dodds, and Duff are champions at their first attempt.

Resilience has been the key for this women's side all the way through the tournament in a manner consistent with the champion side of 2002, who needed a tie-breaker match to make the last four.

Muirhead and her team also only managed to squeeze into the semi-finals by centimetres on the Draw Shot Challenge tie-breaker, and then edged past Sweden in an extra end after a thrilling semi-final.

In the final they were favourites against a Japan team who had stunned world champions Switzerland in the last four and they were ruthless.

A perfectly executed two in the opening end with the hammer (last-stone advantage) put them in control, and crucially Muirhead pulled off a superb draw to steal a shot in the fifth end and a 4-1 lead after five of the 10 scheduled ends.

That left Japan, who had beaten GB to bronze four years ago, chasing the game, and when skip Satsuki Fujisawa missed a good chance to hit back in the sixth end, the result seemed inevitable.

The decisive four came in the very next end and, though the rules dictated Japan could not concede before the eighth, their hopes were all but extinguished.

Their resistance