GB men's curling team told to ignore Norway's flamboyance/Thomas Ulsrud ...

GB men's curling team told to ignore Norway's flamboyance



Great Britain's men's curling team must ignore their next opponents' sartorial flamboyance and continue to cut their own cloth on their Winter Olympics debut.



Monday's last-gasp 7-6 win over Denmark has lifted Kyle Smith's team to four wins from their opening seven games and another win over Norway on Sunday would boost their hopes of securing a semi-final slot.



Thomas Ulsrud's team of former world champions are as famous for their outrageously coloured trousers as they are for their curling prowess, and will have a new treat in store for the round-robin showdown.





They pack different trousers for each game and on Valentines' Day they wore pink trousers with hearts onto the ice for their 6-4 defeat against Japan.



The quietly-spoken Smith admitted it was highly improbable that he would ever opt to follow Ulsrud's example by kitting his team of fellow Scottish farmers out in equally garish costumes.



'Norway have had those trousers for as long as I remember and if they bring a bit of colour to the Games, that's great,' said Smith. 'But there's a few stubborn boys in my team, and I don't think they'd listen to me.'



After a difficult start on their first Olympics appearance, Smith's team have recovered well with successive 7-6 wins over Italy and now Norway taking them from the brink of elimination to a possible place in the final four.



Holding the hammer but trailing by one heading into the last end, Smith capitalised on a Danish mistake to take the two points he needed to avoid his opponents taking the advantage into the extra end.



Thomas Muirhead, the younger brother of Eve who was due to continue her own campaign later on Monday, said: 'When you're playing these games and you aren't firing, but you're still winning, that's a great boost for confidence. We've still got notches to go up.'