GB women shock curling world champions Canada

Team GB’s women curlers kickstarted their campaign with a superb first victory of these Winter Olympics, beating medal contenders Canada 7-6.

After surrendering meekly in their opening two matches against China and South Korea, few fancied Rebecca Morrison’s rink to right the wrongs against the world champions.

However, the British team raised their game significantly, with Morrison in particular making the shots that she was missing earlier in the competition, to overcome a Canadian side who looked fragile after their loss to the United States on Friday.

“It just feels absolutely amazing to go out there and get our first win,” skip Sophie Jackson told BBC Sport. “We put the game together that we wanted to today – we had a good first half and carried that on in the second half.”

It took until the third end for the Scottish quartet to get on the board, but after Canada skip Rachel Homan erred, Morrison kept her composure to slide in for three.

Both their previous matches got away from the British rink after the interval, but they maintained their momentum here.

Points were traded in the sixth and seventh ends before Morrison – growing in stature by the minute – delivered another two to move her side four clear going into the penultimate end.

Canada looked devoid of ideas. Homan, for whom Olympic gold has proved elusive throughout a stellar career, was floundering. One in the ninth left them needing a miracle but GB were not of a mind to let this one go.

“Becca played absolutely fantastically – we all did – but it’s great to see Becca when she’s like that and I’m sure she’ll be on a roll now,” Jackson added.

The women will look to continue their unlikely revival on Sunday against another fancied rink, Sweden (13:05 GMT).

They have six more round-robin matches to play, with a total of five or six wins potentially enough to clinch a semi-final place.