Anna Sidorova and her Russian rink got full reward for dashing back from curling's Continental Cup in Canada the previous weekend when they took the Glynhill International title at Braehead yesterday.

They claimed it in the most dramatic fashion with the 23-year-old former European champion reduced to the role of spectator after doing all she could to apply pressure with her last stone of a high quality, hard fought match against Eun Jung Kim's Koreans.

Kim, who had led her team brilliantly throughout the weekend, prompting Alan Sloan, the tournament chairman, to dub them title favourites even ahead of yesterday's knockout stages, had looked in control of the match until the penultimate end when Sidorova had played a high class draw to take a two and level the scores.

Having hardly made a mistake in going unbeaten through the tournament to that point, including registering a win over Sidorova in the pool stages before knocking out Binia Feltscher's world champions from Switzerland in the quarter-finals, Kim was expected to make it, but her opponent knew it would be different with silverware at stake.

"It reminded me of our bronze medal game at the World Championships last year against another very good Korean team, when we were tied and we didn't have the hammer and we had to play an extra end," she said.

"In today's match and the one we played in the round-robin their skip was very confident about any kind of shot, but I still can't say it was a big surprise for me because it's not an easy shot play with your last shot even though you have to put in an open four foot (target).

"I know... I've been there. If you make the shot you win the game, if you miss it lose it, so today we were kind of lucky, but I also had pressure with my last one and this time I did it better than them."

There had been some dismay registered among organisers and spectators at the absence from the event of Eve Muirhead, the former world champion who is Scotland's leading curler but felt unable to include this tournament into her schedule and Sidorova admitted that it had been challenging to do so having played alongside the Scot at the Continental Cup the previous weekend.

"It was not easy at all because of jet-lag and the time difference, so we had to work even harder to raise our game to the level we needed," she said.

"It is great to win this event, a great experience for us because all the teams played really well this week, so that adds to the pleasure for us."

Best of the Scots in Muirhead's absence was the rink led by Hannah Fleming, the 2013 World Juniuor Championship silver medallists, who did well to reach the knockout stages and were leading Cecilia Ostlund's Swedish rink after five ends, but ultimately lost out when the skip's attempt to draw the winning shot at the final end, drew up marginally short.

Ahead of the event tournament chairman Sloan had observed that the presence of three Russian teams demonstrated the growth of the sport in that part of the world and he felt that Kim's performance had underlined how much the sport is being internationalised.

"I think the two best teams won through this year. Anna's been coming for a number of years but I've said all week that this young Korean team are ones to watch and I think in the future they are going to go very high in the world rankings, if not right to the top, they have the ability," he said.