Eve Muirhead made no attempt hide her disappointment today as she and her team were once again forced to target a bronze medal as their only possible consolation prize at a major curling championship.
The 2013 winners, who were denied their chance to defend their title by Scottish administrators when they were refused to play in the national championships which double up as a qualifying competition, suffered another mixed day as the competition moved into the knockout stages.
Forced to do things the hard way after erratic performances saw them finish in a tie for fourth place at the end of the round-robin stages, they continued to endure mixed fortunes as they raised their game sufficiently to win a tie-break and earn a tilt at the medals, before then missing out in the first of the page play-off matches.
Having lost to Sijia Liu's Chinese in their previous encounter the tie-break was another tight encounter until, with her opponents lying two, Muirhead demonstrated why she is one of the world's most respected players by removing them to claim a three which put her team in charge and another three at the ninth end wrapped things up.
However the tables were turned in every sense in their third/fourth place page play-off match against Anna Sidorova's Russians, whom Team Muirhead had comfortably beaten earlier in the week.
Where they always seemed a step ahead in the day's earlier game this time the Scots looked to be chasing it throughout, the key moments coming in the sixth end when they lost a steal and the eight where Sidorova produced a delicately weighted shot to remove Muirhead's stone from the button and claim two.
The match ended when the Scottish skip's attempt at a double take out at the ninth end sailed through without affecting the head, leaving her in a similar situation to last year's Winter Olympics at Sochi and at the European Championships earlier this season, of having to get her team to recover from disappointment in order to try to finish on a high.
"We're gutted with that," she said.
"There's still a medal to play for. It's going to be tough but that's part of sport. You've got to learn how to bounce back."
All the moreso because the week's form suggests that they are likeliest to meet the Russians once again in that bronze medal match.
Alina Paetz's Swiss rink lost just one of their 11 matches and Jennifer Jones' Canadians only two to set up tomorrow's one v two encounter which will decide the first finalist, the losing team then going on to meet the Russians and the losing team in that match then facing Team Muirhead.
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