Muirhead vows to rally Team GB as curling defeat means wait goes on for Winter Olympic medal
Another day, another dolour.The Great Britain Olympic team suffered their third heartbreak in the space of 24 hours after the mixed doubles curling team of Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds lost their bronze medal match to Italy 5-3.After fourth-placed finishes for Mia Brookes in the big air and Kirsty Muir in the slopestyle, this was another bitter disappointment.“We always speak about winter sports and how it comes down to absolutely nothing,” said the team’s chef de mission, Eve Muirhead, “and the last couple of days has been a prime example of that.It’s been millimetres and milliseconds.
”Team GB have become the fourth to be reckoned with at these Olympics,“Fourth isn’t a position any athlete wants to finish in,” said Muirhead, who wound up there herself in the women’s curling at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018,Now, she says, it is down to the team management to rally the athletes,“As Team GB we need to start building a little bit of momentum,We’ve got to keep positive and hopefully build a bit of momentum into the next couple of weeks.
It’s crucial the sports pull together as one, the staff pull together and bring the morale up,We’ve got to stay positive,We’ve got a long way to go, we are only on day four and there’s a lot of great events to come,”For Mouat and Dodds it was especially tough because they finished in the very same position in this event four years ago in Beijing,The difference this time was that they had played so well during the round robin stage that they were clear favourites for the competition.
They won their first eight games in a row, and only dropped one, 7-6 to Switzerland, after they had qualified for the semi-finals.Even then, they went on to beat this same Italian team in their next game, meaning they finished with a record of played nine, won eight.“We’re gutted,” said Mouat, who couldn’t quite believe what had happened.“We had a much better week than we did four years ago so to again come away with nothing is bitterly disappointing.”Things really went wrong in the semi-finals on Monday, when their touch deserted them all of a sudden.
They lost 9-3 to the Swedish siblings Isabella and Rasmus Wranå, who they had beaten 7-4 three days earlier.It meant they had to play the Italians for the bronze, after they lost their own semi-final to the USA.The British would have chosen almost any other team.Italy are the world and Olympic champions and have just come off a 23-game winning streak.Before the tournament started, a lot of people would have picked them to win it again.
And of course they had the advantage of playing in front of a home crowd, including Stanley Tucci and several thousand school kids.The British had to make do with a small band of friends, family, fellow athletes and Princess Anne.The Italians took control of the match when they stole the fourth end.“We probably just had a couple of half shots, and they fully capitalised on them,” said Dodds.“The steal in the fourth end was a big momentum shift, and they controlled the scoreboard after that.
”The truth is that the Italian pair of Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini, who had beaten Mouat and Dodds in the world championships in 2023 and 2025, were just more accurate when it mattered most.You guess it will be the defeat to Sweden in the semi-finals which will really haunt the British, especially the one end they lost 5-0.Neither really seemed able to explain what had gone wrong.But they insisted they had already moved on from it before playing the bronze medal game.“We spoke really well on Monday,” Mouat said.
“We spoke about how proud we are of making it this far,Not many people in the world can say they got to play two Olympics with one of their best friends,”Both now have to move on, and quickly,Mouat plays in the men’s event which starts on Wednesday, and Dodds in the women’s event, which begins on Thursday,“We will chat about things tonight, probably be a bit upset, and then draw a line in it and get back into it tomorrow,” said Dodds.
“You go into every championship event with a clean slate and I don’t want to dwell on the past, so I will feel the feelings tonight and then regroup.”In Beijing four years ago they both went on to win medals in team events.They, and Muirhead, will be desperately hoping they can do so again.Meanwhile, the Swedish pair later won gold by beating the American duo of Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin 6-5 in a tense final.
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