The busiest man at these Olympics finally had some time off on Friday. After 16 days straight on the curling ice, Bruce Mouat may have needed the breathing room to process a trip that has so far veered between despair, collapses and a stirring resurrection to the brink of a gold medal on Saturday.
All he needs to do now, alongside Bobby Lammie, Grant Hardie and Hammy McMillan, is to beat Canada to supplement their two world titles with the one that matters most.
The problem? Canada are rather good – they thumped Team GB in the round-robin. And they might just be the only nation to care as much about this curious, hypnotic game as the Scots.
But Canada. That Canada. The ones accused of cheating less than a week ago in a double-touch saga that generated countless memes and a week of hand-wringing about the ‘spirit of curling’. The ones whose alleged conduct necessitated an update to the monitoring protocol by umpires at the hog line. Wild times indeed.
If every tale needs a bad guy, then Canada’s Marc Kennedy has been swept into the brief, albeit in slightly bonkers, exaggerated fashion. But on the other side is Mouat, whose own story here has been far more simple and yet complicated in its own right – he and Jen Dodds dominated the mixed doubles and then fell flat on their backsides in the knockouts. After finishing fourth, their misery was audible.
Mouat’s fortunes have followed an opposing trajectory in the men’s event – his rink survived the round robin by the skin of their teeth, were exceptional in inflicting Switzerland’s only defeat in the semi-finals, and now have a chance to upgrade their silver medal from Beijing 2022.
Bruce Mouat is hoping to lead Team GB to curling gold against Canada on Saturday night
Team GB will face Canada, who have generated headlines after being accused of cheating earlier in the competition
If Mouat, 31, carries that fast finish to the top of a podium in Cortina on Saturday, he will join the likes of Rhona Martin and Eve Muirhead as a curling gold medallist in this century and will emulate a Scottish farmer named William K Jackson from the last. Jackson’s win in 1924 marks the one and only time a British male team has taken the Olympic gold.
Martin, now Rhona Howie, is one who believes it will happen. ‘Bruce has been here so many times in big championships and he raises his level when the stakes are highest,’ she told Daily Mail Sport on Friday.
‘Canada will be tough to beat but Bruce can bring back the gold. They are reigning world champions for a reason.
‘I have known Bruce for years. I must have met him 15 years ago when he was a boy. As a young lad he was always quiet, shy, not a shouter. He just got on with it and look how he has done.
‘I’ve known Hammy since he was a baby – I know his parents. Watching them come through like this has made me very proud.’
The family trees of curling have many overlapping branches and every four years they reach to wider places. It’s a surreal level of transcendence for a game that is simultaneously lampooned and mesmerising. Howie’s Stone of Destiny in 2002 made her a national icon for a while.
Howie added: ‘What we have seen is them improving at the right time. They had their losses, but the only thing that mattered was getting through. The round-robin and the knock-outs are like separate tournaments and now that they are in the final, the rest doesn’t matter. Bruce has the experience to know that.
‘If he is standing there will a shot to win, he won’t be thinking of “Stone of Destiny” or anything like that. He will have laser focus and won’t freeze. It’s why he is so good.’
As a side-narrative of this final, the wider Team GB delegation is now guaranteed to hit their medal target of between four and eight. By the close of Saturday, it could also be five, with Zoe Atkin having qualified in first place for the freestyle skiing halfpipe final.
That appointment pits the US-born Stanford student, a world and X Games champion, against Eileen Gu, whose endorsements from the past year amounted to approximately $23million.
Gu’s decision to ditch the US colours for China have generated almost as many headlines here as the Canadian alleged to have double-touched a curling stone on purpose. If a tired Scot can beat him, he will be entitled to a few of his own.