Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds fall short in bid to guarantee Team GB’s first medal

Top seeds Mouat and Dodds dominated the round robin but came unstuck against Sweden, and will now aim to avoid a repeat of Beijing four years ago, when the lost the bronze medal match

Mouat and Dodds will now play for bronze on Tuesday (Getty Images)

Few sports put you through the wringer quite like curling and, after this semi-final defeat, it will take some time for Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds to straighten out.

The Scottish pair won eight of nine in the round robin, secured the top seed for the semi-finals and were favourites for the gold medal.

But the velvety touch that carried them this far deserted them at the worst possible moment and they collapsed to a 9–3 defeat to Sweden. Sport, eh.

Bronze is still on the table for Mouat and Dodds but, after such a shock to the system, they face a tall task to prevent a repeat of the last Olympics, when they lost both of their knockout matches and finished fourth.

“Obviously, it’s not the result we were after,” Dodds said.

“I think we’re both just disappointed we didn’t play like we have all week.

“In an Olympic semi-final you can’t do that and the Swedes capitalised on our mistakes. We were punished for it tonight.”

They certainly were. Sweden’s brother-and-sister combo of Rasmus and Isabella Wranaa scraped into the last four but, after winning their final two group matches, they at least started to find some form.

In contrast, the opposite happened for Mouat and Dodds, who saved their worst performance for the biggest game.

In Beijing four years ago, they arrived as world champions and favourites for gold. In the round robin here, they were playing like it.

Dodds, in particular, was having the week of her career. The hand of Dodds had delivered time and again, and she was as deadly with the hammer — curling jargon for the last stone of an end — as Thor swinging his Mjölnir.

(Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

With a bagpipe band playing the usual tunes outside and more than a few Union flags in the stands, this felt more like Stirling than Cortina as the crowds gathered, but then the match started and nothing about their performance was familiar at all.

Mouat and Dodds struggled with their length and overthrew too often. Dodds, who had been the best player in the tournament up to this point, finished with just a 50% shot success rate. Both Rasmus and Isabella topped 90%.

“We’re really gutted,” Mouat said.

“We’ve had such a good week and it was quite exciting for us to go into this game feeling the way we were feeling, but to come out and not even play close to the way we wanted to is hard to put into words. They were the better team today.”

The sixth end proved decisive. Dodds had just delivered her stone of the match to help steal a point against the hammer and tie the contest at 3–3 when they then produced their worst end of the week.

Mouat missed his lengths, Dodds couldn’t save it and Sweden walked off with a rare five points in their pocket. The end came soon after.

“I was pretty confident with the tick shot but it just didn’t curl the way I was expecting it to,” Dodds said.

“It put us on the back foot and Bruce was trying some really high-technical shots, and then I was a little heavy with my last.

“That sums up my game — I was probably always on the heavy side and we got punished for it. The Swedes played really well and capitalised on that.”

(REUTERS)

The Scots have less than 24 hours to regroup, with the bronze-medal match at 1pm UK time on Tuesday.

It does not get any easier, either, with hosts Italy to contend with. Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini are the reigning world champions, having beaten Mouat and Dodds in the final, and are also the defending Olympic champions.

They were smarting after their 9–8 defeat to the USA, and Mosaner even smashed his broom on the Italian box after losing. Curling is perhaps not the sedate Olympic sport it’s made out to be.

“We’ll probably speak to our coaches, talk things through and regroup for tomorrow,” Dodds said.

“We don’t want this to affect our chances of a medal, so we’ll address the things that need to be corrected and come out firing tomorrow.”

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