Britain's men's curling team face a fight to make the Olympic semifinals after a 9-5 defeat at the hands of Canada on Tuesday evening.
Bruce Mouat's rink were silver medallists four years ago and despite having lost three of their seven games, they were still in the semi-final mix after the United States were defeated by China in the morning session at the Cortina Curling Stadium.
Mouat had said on Monday the final two games were must-win matches but a mistake in the first end saw Canada seize the initiative with a two-point score before Britain took one back in the next.
It was nip and tuck with Canada leading 4-3 at the halfway stage before Britain took two in the sixth end to edge in front for the first time.
Two fine draw shots from Canada's Brad Jacobs secured three points in the seventh end which left Britain teetering at 7-5 down, with a further point from Canada in each of the eighth and ninth ends seeing the handshakes offered.
Mouat said: "I thought we were carrying the momentum pretty well. I still think that we're doing a lot of good things in the games.
"It's just one or two things that we can really sharpen it up on. I think if we reduce those misses or those tactical errors, then we'll be a pretty strong team."
Switzerland and Canada have secured their semi-final places, leaving Britain in a fight with Italy, Norway and the United States -- who they face in their final round-robin match on Wednesday afternoon -- for the remaining two places.
Mouat said: "We know what we need to do -- we need to go and win a game.
"We need to come out and perform as well as we can tomorrow to hopefully give us a good chance if we get into the semis to build momentum back up.
"We need a favour from a few teams probably, but ideally if it's all going or trending the right way, then if we win our game, we'll still qualify."
Canada's high performance director David Murdoch is a familiar name in British curling having won silver at Sochi in 2014 and coached Mouat's rink to match that feat in Beijing.
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He took up his role with Canada in 2023 and asked if Murdoch had passed on any advice, player Marc Kennedy said: "No, we've played these guys so many times, we know how good they are.
"We just got a few misses out of Bruce today that we haven't gotten very often against him, he's been so amazing the last couple of years.
"He missed a couple and Brad made a couple of big ones and that's the difference. That is an unbelievable team, they have set the bar for curling over the past four or five years.
"I know it's been a bit of a struggle for them this week but this sport has changed because of how good they are."