Edin for a fall
Niklas tanks GB gold hope
Team GB were not in the mood to celebrate a first medal after their golden dream was shot down by a former tank commander.
Bruce Mouat’s Scots curling quartet took silver in Beijing’s Ice Cube after losing 5-4 in a showpiece billed as the “clash of the titans” by Sweden’s five-time world champion skip Niklas Edin.
Edin, who spent 10 months as a tank commander in the army, showed why he’s the best in the business by rolling over the Brits in the first extra end.
It left Mouat, Hammy McMillan, Bobby Lammie and Grant Hardie cursing the one that got away, although it still gave Team GB their first medal on the penultimate day of these Games.
The curlers went on to make it two medals overnight through Eve Muirhead’s rink in the women’s final to leave performance director Nigel Holl proud as punch.
He said: “We came here with three potential medal hopes. We delivered in two of those and came very close in the third, so we’ve done our bit. We ran into a Sweden side playing hot curling but I’m incredibly proud of our guys and their performance. They’ll be proud too in time to come.”
McMillan said: “Right now it kind of sucks. It’s not how we wanted to end it.
“We put this team together four-and-a-half, five years ago to stand on top of that podium and the way we’ve performed over the last 18 months, we felt like we could have done that. We just fell a little bit short,”
Mouat and Co entered the final as top-ranked qualifiers and with a message of good luck from the Royal Family. They led after the first end but never again, needing one in the last to force the extra end where Edin was waiting to down them.
Mouat said: “Niklas is maybe the best in curling history but he is also an example of what we can do in four years’ time.”
Vice skip Hardie gave the Swedes credit as he admitted losing is “going to sting for a while” and in this case “take a little bit longer”.
He added: “We’ve raised the bar over the last year and teams now know they have to play one of their best games to beat us. That’s what has earned them the gold medal.”