David Murdoch stands two games away from emulating Rhona Martin as an Olympic champion after a bitter-sweet day for Great Britain's curlers on the Pinerolo ice sheet.

Murdoch's men's team suffered defeats to the United States and Finland in their two final round-robin matches but still secured their place in Wednesday's semi-finals.

Murdoch's 5-2 evening defeat to Finland followed a narrow 9-8 loss to the States in the morning but meant little as the Britons made it through thanks to their early consistency in the competition.

Lead Ewan Macdonald - whose wife Fiona scooped gold as part of Martin's team of four years ago - admitted: "We are a bit disappointed to finish with two defeats because we wanted to keep the momentum going.

"We wanted to finish high enough to get last stone advantage but at the start of the week if somebody had said we would be in this situation we would have taken it."