THE British men’s curlers are doing their best to set the nerves on edge. But when Ewan MacDonald and David Murdoch quietly slapped each other on the back in the middle of the final end in Pinerolo Palaghiaccio yesterday another narrow victory was assured, this time by 6-5 against the pugnacious Swiss. Lying top of the table with six victories to one defeat, the British squad have their destiny very much in their own hands.

For the women, though, the last dregs of the spirit of Salt Lake are draining away fast. An 8-4 defeat by Norway last night left the British needing to win both their remaining games, against Japan today and the US tomorrow, to qualify for the playoff place where they began their epic journey to gold four years ago.

Though another defeat for Canada, this time against the Italians, has complicated the mathematics, one more victory for Murdoch’s men today, against Finland or the USA, will seal their place in the last four beyond any doubt.

“We’re still top of the pile, which is where we want to stay,” said Murdoch, skip of the British team. “Whether we’ve qualified or not, the last thing we need is to lose the last two matches going into the semi-final. The confidence is there.”

Murdoch, like Rhona Martin four years ago, exudes an air of quiet confidence on and off the rink and his team are following his lead.

“David has absolute confidence in himself,” said Warwick Smith, the most experienced member of the team, “and the team has absolute confidence in him.” They are also developing a useful habit of winning games they should have lost and, after Shelley Rudman’s silver in the bob skeleton, no longer have to worry about shouldering home hopes for a medal, their role before the start of these Games.

MacDonald, husband of Fiona MacDonald, one of the heroines from Salt Lake, provides a neat link to a golden past and it was his 100% shooting accuracy, as rare as a 10-under par round of golf, which had swept away the Swedes the previous day. Yesterday, Murdoch had to dig deep after the Swiss held a 5-3 lead going into the ninth end. The British clawed back two to level the scores and always had the final stone protected though victory was measured in inches rather than feet.

Barring a statistical collapse, the men face a week which might yet match the wattage of the curling mania generated by the women last time when 5.6m people watched the gold-medal winning game in Salt Lake. At 27, Murdoch, the Lockerbie beef farmer, has been waiting much of his life for such a moment. The videotape on Martin’s triumph is nearly worn out, but Murdoch’s Olympic ambitions, improbably, can be dated back to Daley Thompson’s decathlon victory at the 1984 Olympics.

Elswehere, there was gold for Shani Davis, the first African-American speed skater to represent the US at the Winter Games and certainly the first to emerge from the southside of Chicago, in the 1000m long track and Ahn Hyun-soo led a Korean 1-2 in the short track version.