Heartbreak for Team GB as Canada take men’s curling gold on last stone

Sometimes the silvers you win feel more like the golds you lose. After an excruciatingly tense three-hour final, there’s no doubt which way Bruce Mouat and the British men’s curling team will see this one. They were beaten 9-6 by Canada, in a game that took several twists and turns on its way to the very last stone of the 10th end. It is their second Olympic silver medal, after the one they won when they lost to Sweden in Beijing in 2022. After 10 days of competition, the Olympic title is still the one thing in the sport that this world champion team haven’t won, and that will sting.

The British rink had the better start. They forced Canada to settle for one from the 1st end, even though they had last stone advantage. But Grant Hardie is a gnarly competitor and he and his team worked their way into a 4-3 lead at halfway with a couple of double take-outs in the 3rd and 5th ends. In the 4th, when Britain had the hammer, they were made to play the same clearing shot four times in a row, before Hardie finally nailed it. Then Mouat missed with his penultimate stone, which clipped his own guard on its way home.

By then, the crowd in the Cortina Ice Arena had fallen breathless; even the bands of mad keen Scottish curling fans who had flown over especially were too nervous to talk, except in the odd moments when their excitement at the shot just played compelled them to break out one of the chants they’d written for the team, “I Like To Mouat Mouat”, or “We’ve got Lammie, Oh! Lammie, Lammie!” or else Hammy McMillan’s cousin struck up Loch Lomond on his bagpipes from his seat in the stadium eyrie.

They sang loud after the 6th, when Mouat put Great Britain back in front with a superb double take-out. Canada were sitting two up, but Mouat’s stone curled right into the house where it took out one Canadian stone out, then ricocheted back across to the left where it also out the second. GB all of a sudden moved into a 5-4 lead. But everything changed in the 9th end, when the Canadians managed to pick up three to move into an 8-6 lead, after a canny bit of positioning had left Mouat in an impossible situation.

In such a tight game, it was too much for the British to make back, even with the hammer in the 10th.