SWE, GBR into Olympic men’s final

At this level, it’s all about the hammer.

Two scintillating and strategic semifinals saw Sweden and Great Britain advance to the gold medal match in men’s four-player curling at the Olympic Winter Games.

Sweden’s Niklas Edin hung on to defeat 2006 champion Brad Gushue of Canada 5-3 and Great Britain’s Bruce Mouat upended defending champion John Shuster of the United States 8-4 to set up a rematch of both the 2021 world and European championship finals.

Sweden’s Team Edin, winners of Olympic bronze and silver at Sochi and PyeongChang, captured the last world title in Calgary with a 10-5 win over Mouat’s Scottish foursome. At last November’s Euro shootout, Team Mouat took the gold with an 8-5 victory over the Swedes.

Canada and USA will face off for Olympic bronze. Both sessions take place Saturday at Beijing’s “Ice Cube” venue.

The modern game of curling—now featuring the five-rock Free Guard Zone rule—is a battle of last rock advantage, where “the hammer” is key. Sweden and Great Britain owned them on Thursday night, meaning Canada and USA had to chase that advantage throughout the match. 

Canada could never quite catch up, and while USA stole the first points of their match–a deuce in the second end—GBR came right back with a three, maintaining their advantage.

Both games were taut and rife with tension.

Sweden led Canada 4-3 in the ninth end, and Brad Gushue made the purposeful decision to blank the end or drop a steal to fall behind 5-3—taking one point was never an option. He knew the analytics, which told him that scoring one would leave him with roughly a 10% chance of winning the game.

Gushue’s blank attempt was no picnic—he had to make a down-weight, come-around hit and roll out on a Swedish stone in the back eight-foot rings—and he made it beautifully.

One sheet over, Great Britain held a 5-4 lead over USA in the ninth. USA third Chris Plys missed both of this throws—the ice was slowing—and Shuster also faced a mathematical problem. He elected to throw his final stone of the ninth away, giving a point to Great Britain, to trail 6-4 with last stone advantage coming home.

In the end, Shuster faced a difficult runback double, which overcurled, handing Mouat a meaningless extra pair of points. The Scotsmen, who had lost earlier to Shuster and have found him a difficult opponent, started to celebrate.

Brad Gushue was in the hack, preparing for his final throw. He’d played a cat-and-mouse game with Sweden for three hours and Edin had made a lifesaving hit and roll on his final stone, leaving the Canadians options for one and an extra-end or two and the win. Gushue chose the game-winning shot, a runback double, and threw it amid the noise of Great Britain’s celebrations … but directional sweeping overcarved it and Sweden were through.

“It’s disappointing, obviously” said Gushue. “Just before that (last) rock made contact, I thought we had it made. It just came up too much. But I thought we had that game, I thought we battled hard… and it just didn’t work out.

“Nik’s team played phenomenal.

“It’s disappointing. Once I saw my family after the game, my heart broke.”

Great Britain’s semifinal victory also eased the disappointment Mouat felt when he and Jennifer Dodds lost the semifinal of the mixed doubles discipline the previous week. They went on to lose the bronze medal game to Oskar Eriksson, Edin’s men’s team third, and his partner Almida De Val.

“I’m really struggling to sum it up, but I guess you saw from our reaction there that it was just pure elation,” said Mouat. “We’ve worked so hard for this.

“We were just trying to focus on not losing that three. John and his team are so good tactically and really good with the taps, so we were expecting him to be really close.”

Prior to the session, Eriksson was the only curling athlete with three Olympic medals. He’s now assured of a fourth.

“It’s going to be amazing, said Mouat of Saturday’s final. “Niklas and his team have been our rivals for so many years now. We’ve played them in numerous Europeans and world championships so it feels really nice to be able to play them in a larger final.”

“For the last couple of years, they’ve probably been the most consistent team,” said Edin. “And I think in championships over the past seven, eight years, we’ve been the most consistent team. So it’s a clash of titans, so to speak, in our sport.

“It feels like it’s going to be a really big game. Whoever wins deserves it. No one can say anything else.”

“We’re just going to try to play as well as we can. And then, if it doesn’t win us the gold, we’ve done what we can here.”

“It’s hugely disappointing but at the same time I was super proud of how we played and how we battled in the game,” said Shuster. “I’m sure the disappointment will set in and it will feel worse, but I think honestly (Great Britain) are a great curling team and they don’t make too many mistakes.”