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The cruel truth is that sometimes the silvers you win are more like golds you lost. After four years of thinking about this Olympics, and 11 days of competing in this Olympics, there is no doubt about how Bruce Mouat and his three teammates will weigh their achievement here after they were beaten by Canada 9-6 in the final. It was an excruciatingly tense game, which twisted and turned on its way to the very final stone of the 10th end. And when it was over, two of the British players were left in tears. Great Britain’s fourth medal of these Olympics was more bitter than sweet.
“I’m heartbroken,” said Grant Hardie. “We lost that final four years ago. It took us a long time to get over it and find the motivation to go again and we found it and we were so hungry to go and deliver this time, and unfortunately it just didn’t quite happen.” His cousin Hammy McMillan felt the same way. “It took me four years to get over the first silver,” he said, “so it will probably take a lot longer this time.”
They were the better team for much of the match, but then they were the better team for much of the last four years, too. In that time they won two world championships, two European championships, and four grand slam events. Even the Canadians, led by Brad Jacobs, describe them as “the best team in the world”. Jacobs would. He and Mouat have played each other in 14 games now, and this was only the second time that Jacobs has ever won.
Mouat, who many reckon the best shotmaker in the game, has now played in four Olympic medal matches across the mixed doubles and men’s events at two Games, and lost every one of them. “I’m trying to remind myself that I would have been extremely proud of this when I was five, six, seven years old, when all I wanted was to be an Olympian,” Mouat said. “That’s what I’m going to try and just keep on telling myself.”
Mouat will carry on to the next Olympics in France. “100%” he said. “I love the sport, I love my teammates. And I’m not done yet.” But he isn’t sure whether his three friends – Bobby Lammie the third – will be with him. “I would love to play with the guys again. We’ve not actually had that conversation as four individuals, so we would need to go and have that discussion. I know personally that I want to continue and we’ll go from there.”
Hardie spoke about wanting to retire after the last Olympic final, when they were beaten by Sweden. “The pain from four years ago was that much, we thought: ‘Let’s go and give it another go,’” Hardie said. “We wanted to win it for each other. We gave ourselves a chance, too, there was so much good work to redeem ourselves.”
The British had the better start and were leading after the second end. But Jacobs is a gnarly competitor and he and his team worked their way into a 4-3 lead at halfway.
By then, the crowd in the Cortina Ice Arena had fallen breathless, even the bands of mad keen Scottish curling fans who had flown over especially were too nervous to talk, except in the odd moments when their excitement at the shot just played compelled them to break out one or another of the chants they had written for the team, or else McMillan’s cousin struck up Loch Lomond on his bagpipes from his seat in the stadium eyrie.
They sang loud after the sixth end, when Mouat put Great Britain back in front with a superb double take-out. But the decisive moment came in the ninth end. Canada had the hammer and Mouat’s team seemed to get stuck in two minds about how to play it.
“We were in the exact same spot in the semi-final and we said: ‘Look guys, same again,’” said Hardie. They tried to force a blank end, which would have put them one shot up with the hammer in the 10th. “We didn’t want to play it too aggressively. And unfortunately we missed four or five shots in a row, and after eight brilliant ends that flipped control of the game.”
The Canadians managed to pick up three and all of a sudden they were sitting on an 8-6 lead. In such a tight game, it was too much for Mouat to claw back, even with the hammer in the 10th end. You can only you hope that one day they will look back on all they have achieved together and think very differently about it to the way they do now.
