BEIJING — The British have clinched their first medal of the Beijing Video games, because of Bruce Mouat and the boys’s curling staff.
4 Scottish lads beat the American defending Olympic champions 8-4 within the semifinals Thursday night time to clinch no worse than a silver medal and earn the fitting to play Sweden for the gold.
Though Scotland is curling’s birthplace and the game stays a nationwide ardour, the British haven't received the boys’s gold — and have simply two medals of any shade — for the reason that sport returned to the Winter Video games in 1998.
“It’ll be some celebration again house if we do,” British lead Hammy McMillan stated. “It could imply absolutely the world to everybody if we do.”
The Swedes topped Canada 5-3 within the different semifinal on the Ice Dice curling venue. Skip Niklas Edin can have an opportunity to finish his set of Olympic medals, having received bronze in Sochi and a silver in Pyeongchang.
“It’s going to be a brilliant, tremendous attention-grabbing remaining,” Edin stated. “I believe it is perhaps nerve-wracking to play, however I believe it’s going to be a brilliant well-played recreation.”
John Shuster, who received bronze in 2006 and gold 4 years in the past — the one Olympic curling medals in U.S. historical past — will skip the Individuals within the third-place recreation in opposition to Canada.
“I discovered quite a bit in Torino again in 2006, as a result of you have got this big disappointment. After which, you recognize, it’s very easy to simply let that disappointment linger,” he stated.
“However you recognize what we've got to simply notice is we've got the chance to return again right here and be on an Olympic podium, successful an Olympic medal for the US of America,” Shuster stated. “And I believe we’re going to — I do know we’re going to be prepared to return out tomorrow and play and do this.”
Trailing 5-4 on the five-end break, the Individuals deliberately blanked three straight ends to retain management of the last-rock benefit, often called the hammer. They'd have fortunately accomplished it once more within the ninth finish, however Britain boxed them in, and Shuster deliberately threw away his final stone — conceding one level to retain the hammer within the tenth, trailing 6-4.
Within the remaining finish, Mouat left Shuster no good choices for his remaining stone, and in desperation he wound up knocking away the entire purple rocks within the scoring space to depart two British yellow ones.
“We misplaced to a staff that performed higher. That’s the lengthy and the wanting it,” U.S. second Matt Hamilton stated. “There’s nothing you possibly can actually say or to sugarcoat it.”
Sweden additionally performed for the large finish, blanking the sixth and seventh in a 3-3 recreation earlier than Canada compelled it to take a single level within the eighth. Then Canada took an intentional zero, getting into the tenth down 4-3.
However Brad Gushue’s final stone within the tenth was inches farther away from the middle of the goal, giving Edin — a five-time world champion and two-time Olympic medalist — the steal of 1.