Russia beat Scotland by 7-2 in Friday evening's 3v4 Page Play-off in the ZEN-NOH World Women's Curling Championship in Sapporo, Japan.
They now go onto Saturday evening's Semi-final, while Scotland will play in Sunday morning's bronze medal game against the loser of the Semi-final.
To reach this game, Scotland had beaten China 9-4 in a fourth place tie-breaker earlier in the day, while Russia has finished third in the round robin rankings.
With Russia finishing above the Scots in the round robin, they had last stone advantage when the game started.
They used it to blank the first two ends and then, in the third end, their skip Anna Sidorova tapped-back a Scottish stone in the house to score one point.
In the fourth end, Scotland's skip Eve Muirhead played a triple take-out to score one point and level the score at 1-1.
In the fifth end, Muirhead placed her last stone at the back of the house but Sidorova hit this and stayed around rather than rolling out, to score one point for a 2-1 lead at the fifth end break.
In the sixth end, Sidorova drew her last stone onto the button and when Muirhead came up slightly wide, the Russians stole a single point for a 3-1 lead.
Muirhead was then forced to draw for just one point in the seventh end, getting inside four Russian counters with her last stone.
Muirhead placed her last stone nicely on the button, half-frozen, in the eighth end, but Sidorova was able to better that, nudging out two Scottish stones and, after a measure for second shot, scored two points to lead by 5-2.
In the ninth end, Muirhead had a complete miss with an attempted double take-out to give Russia a steal of two points and the Scots immediately conceded, with the score at 7-2 to Russia.
Speaking after the game, Russia's Sidorova said: "The good thing is that we won and we are one step closer to our main goal – to win the event. The bad thing is we still have nothing, so we need to win the next match to make sure we’re in the medals. We still have a lot of hard work to do but we're looking forward to our next game."
After her loss, a naturally-subdued Muirhead said: "We're gutted with that. 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."
The next game takes place on Saturday morning - the Page 1v2 Play-off between Switzerland and Canada.
The winner of that goes directly into Sunday afternoon's Gold medal game, while the loser faces Russia in Saturday evening's Semi-final.
The Semi-final winner then goes onto the gold medal game while the loser will play Scotland for bronze medals.
SCHEDULE
Saturday 21 March 2015
1v2 Page Play-off: Switzerland v Canada (09:00)
Semi-final: Loser of 1v2 v Russia (17:00)
RESULTS
Tie-breaker: Scotland 9, China 4
3v4 Page Play-off: Scotland 2, Russia 7
Standings after 3v4 Page Play-off (W-L):
1. Switzerland 10-1 (To play Canada in 1v2 Page Play-off)
2. Canada 9-2 (To play Switzerland in 1v2 Page Play-off)
3. Russia 9-3 (To play loser of 1v2 in Semi-final)
4. Scotland 8-5 (To play loser of Semi-final in bronze medal game)
5. China 7-5
6. Japan 6-5
7. Sweden 5-6
8. Denmark 4-7
9. Germany 4-7
10. USA 3-8
11. Finland 2-9
12. Norway 1-10
During the round robin portion of a competition, teams with the same win-loss record will be listed alphabetically, by their three letter code, and ranked equal.
Results, statistics, news and photos from the ZEN-NOH World Women’s Curling Championship 2015 can be seen here on the World Curling Federation’s official event website: http://worldcurling.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0241c8190a96a3d4afd003317&id=e6c87e36d2&e=23d1572579
For more information, please contact:
Danny Parker
Media & Communications
World Curling Federation
media@worldcurling.org
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