Team GB clinch their FIRST medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Curling
BREAKING NEWS: Team GB clinch their FIRST medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics as the men’s curling squad secure at least silver after beating the USA in their Beijing semi-final… and they will now play Sweden on Saturday
Team GB have secured their first medal of the 2022 Winter Olympic GamesThe men’s curling squad are guaranteed at least a silver after beating the USA Bruce Mouat’s team got the better of the reigning Olympic champions 8-4The British team will now take on Sweden in Saturday’s final for the gold medal
<!–
<!–
<!–
<!–
(function (src, d, tag){
var s = d.createElement(tag), prev = d.getElementsByTagName(tag)[0];
s.src = src;
prev.parentNode.insertBefore(s, prev);
}(“https://www.dailymail.co.uk/static/gunther/1.17.0/async_bundle–.js”, document, “script”));
<!–
DM.loadCSS(“https://www.dailymail.co.uk/static/gunther/gunther-2159/video_bundle–.css”);
<!–
Team GB have secured their first medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics after the men’s curling squad guaranteed themselves at least a silver after beating the USA in their semi-final.
Bruce Mouat’s men held their nerve to beat the Americans 8-4 and book their place in Saturday’s Olympic final against Sweden.
Fighting back from a nightmare start in which they conceded two with the ‘hammer’ in the first end, they led by a point at the halfway stage.
Team GB have secured their first medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics in the men’s curling event
Bruce Mouat’s team beat the USA in the Chinese capital to guarantee at least a silver medal
The Americans are the reigning Olympic champions and beat Britain in the round-robin stage
The Americans blanked three consecutive ends as they sought a bigger return for their last stone advantage, but were forced to give one away in the ninth.
Armed with a 6-4 lead going into the final end, Mouat’s team retained control, and when US skip John Shuster’s final attempted take-out went awry, the Britons’ advance was secured.
Mouat was pleased with the win after a mixed bag of an Olympics so far.
‘The last two weeks, especially for myself, has been a bit of a roller coaster so this is very special,’ he told BBC Sport.
‘I’m so excited to be able to share the moment with the guys and the celebration at the end was pure elation. I don’t think I can sum it up any other way.
‘I am excited to play that game and we have got a day off tomorrow. Just looking forward to getting on the ice again and going for that gold.
‘We knew that we were going to have two games today so we came out to win this morning to keep momentum going and built that into the semi-final, that is exactly what we needed to do.’
Britain recovered from a dreadful start in which they conceded two with the ‘hammer’ early on
US skip John Shuster’s final attempted take-out went awry, handing the British team victory
The British team will now take on Sweden in Saturday’s final for the gold medal in Beijing
Earlier on Thursday, Great Britain’s women’s curling team squeezed into their semi-finals by 10 centimetres as Eve Muirhead fashioned a great escape at the National Aquatics Centre in Beijing.
Muirhead, a bronze medallist in Sochi in 2014, went into the last match of the round-robin phase against the Russian Olympic Committee requiring at least three results to go her way in order to book a top-four spot.
The 31-year-old kept her side of the bargain with a brilliant double take-out in the penultimate end to score four and sink the Russians 9-4, then waited nervously while Sweden beat South Korea in order to guarantee their place.
Locked together with two other teams on a 5-4 win-loss record, Muirhead’s team advanced by virtue of the ‘draw shot challenge’ system – an average of the accuracy of the final pre-match draw shots played prior to every round-robin match.
It placed Muirhead in third place, ahead of Japan and Canada, the latter being eliminated, and set up a semi-final against Sweden on Friday.
‘We had to win that game today and that was the first thing we went out there to do,’ Muirhead told BBC Sport.
‘We fought our hearts out, nothing was in our control apart form our own game. Of course, we maybe had one eye on the other games but I see we managed to get a semi-final spot on the draw shot.’
