Men’s curlers spare Team GB embarrassment of medal-less Winter Olympics

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Bobby Lammie, who has spent most of his career playing alongside Mouat, makes up the playing quartet with alternate Ross Whyte also due a medal under Olympic curling rules, despite not yet taking to the ice. Born in York before then moving north of the border a few months later, the curlers have been winding him up about there being a potential English champion among their ranks.

First up though is dispatching the Swedes, who they lost to in last year’s World Championships.

“This team is the best prepared curling team on the planet. I am backing Bruce Mouat, I am telling you that,” said head coach and 2014 silver medallist David Murdoch.

He had double reason for optimism with the women having earlier squeezed into Friday’s lunchtime semi-final against Sweden.

Their 9-4 round robin victory over the Russian Olympic Committee, however, was only half the story, as three other results also fell their way. So too the outcome of a dramatic Draw Shot Challenge (DSC) tie-breaker, which calculates the average distance of the last stone draws made by players before each match in the round robin. Britain nudged through by 10cm at the expense of Canada.

“I’ve seen some crazy play-offs in curling, but that was wild,” reflected Murdoch.

With a guaranteed match for the women and Zoe Atkin, sister of 2018 ski slopestyle bronze medallist Izzy, also qualifying in fourth place for ski halfpipe final in the early hours of this morning, perhaps Team GB’s frozen failure of a Games may just be thawing a little.

Meet Team GB’s first guaranteed medallists Bruce Mouat

Whether eventually silver or gold, a medal for a 27-year-old Mouat is reward for perseverance after missing out in the bronze medal match of the mixed doubles curling. An event he was the reigning world champion in, Mouat admitted that he struggled to sleep afterwards and sought the help of a sports psychologist to deal with the disappointment.

Hailing from Stirling, Great Britain’s skip was just eight when he became obsessed with Granite, the first and only curling video game, and has since taken that love of technology into his sporting life, using an analytics-based approach to sport. Openly gay and seen sporting rainbow laces on his shoes in Beijing, Mouat became the youngest men’s skip ever to win a grand slam event in 2017 and is now a two-time European champion and twice men’s world medallist.

Bobby Lammie

With his grandfather owning his own ice rink, it is little surprise Lammie has taken the path he has, having been throwing curling stones since the age of seven, before then joining Stranraer curling club three years later. A University of Stirling sports science graduate, the 25-year-old is a strong Celtic fan, putting him in direct rivalry with Rangers-supporting team-mates Grant Hardie and Hammy McMillan.

Lammie, who takes on the second role in the rink, has spent most of his career playing alongside skip Mouat with the two winning the junior world title together in 2016. He also has a playing partnership with another member of the British Olympic team, having has been the mixed doubles partner of women’s skip Eve Muirhead since 2019.

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