DAVID MURDOCH uttered a grateful 'tak' to Danish skip Rasmus Stjerne after he caught a lucky break to keep his seemingly fading Olympic curling ambitions alive in Sochi.

Murdoch's rink had started their campaign with a flurry of wins but ended the round-robin stages with successive defeats to Canada, Norway and then China.

And only because Stjerne's Danish team, who were playing just for pride, pulled off a surprise win over Norway can Murdoch still dream of an elusive Olympic medal at the third attempt.

Skip Murdoch and his team of Greg Drummond, Michael Goodfellow and Scott Andrews will now face Norway's Thomas Ulsrud in a tiebreaker to decide fourth place in the group stages today, with a place alongside Sweden, Canada and China in the semi-finals - and a guaranteed match for a medal - at stake.

"It's bittersweet because we've wanted to get across that finish line for a while now and we've just not managed it," said Murdoch, who insisted he wasn't worried his team have now not won since last Friday.

"The Chinese skip was on fire there and you've got to give him credit, he had a tremendous game. We're still in it and thankfully Denmark did us a favour.

"It seems we always do things the hard way, but we can't complain and we'll certainly take it, otherwise we'd be out."