Scots step up their medal challenge

The contrasting fortunes for Scotland’s teams at the world junior championships continued yesterday, with the men all but guaranteeing themselves a place in the medal games and the women going down to their sixth loss.

Inverness’ Ally Fraser and his team are growing in confidence as the event progresses and were always in control on their way to a workmanlike 8-3 win against the United States.

They nosed ahead with a score of two in the third end and then took a decisive 5-2 lead when Fraser had a simple draw for three shots after the US wrecked with their last effort.

In the second half, the Scots had single steals in the eighth and ninth ends for an 8-3 lead, after which the Americans conceded.

This win means the Scottish men now share the lead with Norway, both on six wins and one loss.

Fraser said: “That took a while, but it was just a case of being patient. The team played well and that was a good performance all around.”

He added: “At half-time we spoke about capitalising on their mistakes and forcing them to make mistakes.

“I thought our stone placement was pretty good. We were hitting and rolling where we wanted to and splitting the house when we needed to.”

While the Scots are now guaranteed at least a tie-break place, thoughts of the weekend action are far from Fraser’s mind.

“We’ve just got to win our last two games and see what happens,” he said.

Those last two round- robin games are against Canada and then Denmark today.

Although the Scottish women’s performance against Canada was better than some earlier showings, they still had too many mistakes and went down 7-6.

A typical example of mistakes made came when the Scots gave up a chance for two in the sixth when Anna Sloan, who was playing last stones, while Lauren Gray, from Stirling, was skipping, came up short.

Although Sloan later made a good three in the eighth to level the game at 6-6, Canada blanked the ninth and then scored the one needed for their 7-6 victory in the 10th.