Thursday late afternoon.
photo by Gina Aitken
rnNo one has helped us in terms of results, so although we have two losses, with which other groups advance directly (even from second place), we are playing a tie-breaker with Team Scotland to see who will complete the last eight. From our group, the Russians have progressed from first place and the Estonians from second place, and they are playing an excellent tournament so far. The first half of the match is quite cautious with the teams taking turns to take a narrow lead. The real drama starts to unfold at 4:4, after six ends. Although in the sixth end on a power play we already have the opportunity to play more than two, but in the seventh on a power play of the Scots only the measurement decides the number one of the opponent. Going into the eighth we are one down with the advantage, but in mixed doubles it is still less of a plus than in fours curling. The pitch is better for us, but the Scots' happily set stone angles help keep us away from the deuce. Our penultimate stone gives us a chance to create a lot of pressure, but the stone rolls over at the last moment. The Scots try to hold their newly formed one, but we narrowly score and go into the extra end. It's rare that we manage to throw all the stones the way we want, but it's even rarer that the win still goes to the opposition. However, I have witnessed it first hand and unfortunately that unfortunate rarity happened to us. Gina Aitken, with her last angle rais to five and a half metres, played what was probably the stone of her life (angle double runback double and stay) and Scottish joy could break out. We played an excellent match which was a real highlight of the programme. However, our opponent was a hair better and advanced. We are sad because we wanted to get a better result and more importantly some Olympic points. Thank you all for your support and believe that we really gave everything on the ice.