Team GB's women's curling team make history by clinching gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics

Eve Muirhead' s team led 4-1 following the fifth end after Japanese skip Satsuki Fujisawa missed an attempted take-out and gave Muirhead a steal of one.

Determined Muirhead, 31, scored two on the first end but a missed attempt at two in the fourth had given the Japanese a glimmer of hope.

Team GB's 10-3 victory was the joint-biggest winning margin in a final since the sport was reintroduced in 1998.

It emulates the famous gold won by Rhona Howie's curling team at Salt Lake City 20 years ago.

In joyous scenes inside the Ice Cube in Beijing, Muirhead and her team-mates Vicky Wright, Jennifer Dodds, Hailey Duff and alternate Mili Smith were visibly emotional at their stunning victory.

‘This is a moment I dreamed of as a young child,’ said an overwhelmed Muirhead afterwards. ‘Having lost two semi-finals then come through that great battle against Sweden, we knew this was an opportunity we might never get again.

‘It has definitely been a rollercoaster journey for the whole team. From not finishing the top six at the world championships, we had to come back and it was hard.

‘There were times I wanted to throw my shoes in the cupboard and never get them out again. But we all came back and got this new team together and came through the Europeans and the qualifiers.

‘There have been ups and downs, there have been a couple of positive tests, but here we are, five very healthy girls with gold medals around our necks.’

The parallels with Martin – now Rhona Howie, who was watching from the stands in her role as a BBC pundit – were evident in the way Muirhead’s team had edged into the knockout stages with an underwhelming 5-4 record.

The Japanese endured a similar passage to the final, but unlike Niklas Edin’s experienced Swedish rink who had sunk the dreams of the Great Britain men’s team so ruthlessly less than 24 hours earlier, skip Satsuki Fujisawa was unable to wrest the initiative away from Muirhead.

A two in the first end gave Muirhead the advantage and she was centimetres from a steal in the second end, Fujisawa squeezing in to take one.

The victory followed the silver medal clinched by the men’s team in Saturday’s final.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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