FÜSSEN – What a difference a year makes.

Last year in Basel, Switzerland's Mirjam Ott began the Le Gruyère European Curling Championships with three consecutive losses. She made a lineup change and won seven games in a row, some of them by the skin of her teeth, before losing the semi-final and taking home the bronze medal.

One year later at the 2007 Euro shootout in Füssen, Ott is handily racking up wins, owns a 6-1 record and is breathing a lot easier. And she credits a number of factors.

"We've had very good preparation," Ott said.

"We've had good results in spiels in the fall, and the Swiss Association wanted us to go to a training camp before Füssen, so we spent two days in Bern, that was good.

"And the player change of the new team is good, everything is very comfortable."

Former World Junior champion Carmen Schäfer is the new third on the team, which thrashed Finland's Anne Malmi 9-2 in the seventh draw. Second Valeria Spälty is the sole remaning teammate from Ott's 2006 Olympic silver medal-winning squad, while Janine Greiner is in her second term at lead position.

Sweden and Denmark are both tied with Switzerland for first place at 6-1. Anette Norberg's six-time European Champions beat Austria's Claudia Toth 11-2 while Denmark's young Lene Nielsen dumped Germany's Andrea Schöpp 7-4.

In other matches, Russia overcame an early four-point deficit and scored nine unanswered points to shock Scotland's Kelly Wood 9-6. This pulled Scotland back into a second-place tie, with Russia, at 4-3. Italy's Diana Gaspari was upset 7-6 by the Czech Republic on an extra end steal, which puts the Italians at 3-3. Germany is at 2-5 and Finland, Austria and the Czech Republic have 1-6 records.

Competition continues through to the Championship Finals on December 8, with live television and webstreamed coverage on Eurosport, NRK (Norway), Eurosport.com and CurlTV.com.