Mouat and Co full of beans in Beijing after their highly
TEAM GB men’s curling skip Bruce Mouat insisted his rink got a wake-up call as they returned to winning ways with a crushing victory over Norway.
Mouat ordered extra coffees for his team after they were caught slumbering in an early morning match with the USA, slipping to a narrow 9-7 defeat.
But nine hours later – after some strong caffeine and words – they were wide awake against Steffan Walstad’s Norway claiming a 8-3 victory, inspired by a brilliant two-point steal in the fourth end.
“We took on a tough shot there and it come off. It didn’t win us the game but it gave us the advantage,” said Mouat.
“They are a really good side but we’re playing really well and that was clinical and it was important to bounce back from the defeat to the USA.
“I’m looking forward to a day off and long lie in and then we can focus on our game on Sunday.
“This was a really important match for ironing out the kinks in our game, all four us were firing on all cylinders and that really gives some momentum.
“We controlled the game from the start and established ourselves, we were pretty relentless and never gave up.”
There are high hopes for Mouat’s team here, after their silver at last year’s World Championships
and impressive victory at the Europeans in November.
They started their campaign with a classy win over Italy but Mouat admits a lack of time together – they’ve not played since winning gold in Lillehammer – was a factor in a bit of rustiness.
They will get a day off in Beijing today but will be back in action tomorrow with matches against hosts China and Denmark.
“It’s definitely a long week ahead. We obviously know we can fight back in any situation,” he added. “It’s nice to see we can do that and it gives us a lot of confidence going forward.
“But this is only our third game in a few months, so I’m still getting back to playing with the boys and just need to figure out a few more things.”
Meanwhile, Eve Muirhead is too experienced to hit the panic button after slipping to a second defeat.
The British women’s curling skip knows what it’s like to be in a tough spot and insists she knows how to escape in Beijing.
Indeed it was just a few weeks ago that Muirhead’s rink lost to curling minnows Turkey in the Olympic qualifier, only to rebound with a brilliant winning streak.
It pays not to stress too early in curling and while two defeats in their opening three matches, including yesterday’s 9-7 loss to Korea, is not ideal, neither is it anywhere close to terminal.
However, it certainly doesn’t get any easier, with Tabitha Peterson’s unbeaten USA next up in the early hours of this morning in a match that isn’t ‘must-win’ but wouldn’t leave much margin in the five games that followed if success wasn’t forthcoming.
“We’ve got to move on, we’ve only played three games and we’ve been in this position before,” said Muirhead, 31, who won the European title in Norway last year.
“We were in this position in the Olympic qualifier, we’d only won one game and lost two, so we know where we are, we know what we’ve got to do and of course we are going to come out firing.
“Out there there’s zero margin for error, any errors you make, you usually get crucified for them. We just didn’t get the rubs on our side.”