Scots stun Canadians before a halt

Bruce Mouat’s Scotland team stunned hosts Canada to reach the semi-finals of the World Curling Championships in Calgary yesterday before the tournament was halted – hopefully temporarily – after positive Covid tests were recorded at the Olympic Park venue.

The Murrayfield skip and his colleagues Hammy Mcmillan, Bobby Lammie and Grant Hardie lost 9-6 to Brendan Bottcher’s rink in last week’s round robin clash, but with all four Scots averaging over 90%, they took revenge in yesterday’s medal play-offs.

A two at the seventh end put them in front for the first time, and although Bottcher drew level, another Scottish two at the last end sealed a famous 5-3 victory.

“I’m so proud of how everyone played there,” smiled Mouat. “We needed to bring our A game and that was maybe our best game of the week so far. “There’s not many matches that are bigger than Scotland versus Canada at a World Championships in Canada, so this was a big opportunity for us. It was a nice win to get after losing to Canada both previous times we’ve been in the World Championship play-offs (in 2018 and 2019).”

The Covid cases then forced the postponement of yesterday’s USA v Switzerland play-off, leaving Mouat and company waiting to learn whether they will face Russian Sergey Glukhov or Sweden’s defending champion Niklas Edin in the last four.

All teams were tested yesterday as organisers worked to restart the tournament.