BRITISH PAIR GET SET TO GO AGAIN AFTER MISSING OUT ON MIXED DOUBLES MEDALS

Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat's last chance of a medal in the mixed doubles competition at the Winter Olympics in Beijing was finished by sharp-shooting Sweden who dominated their third-place play-off in Beijing’s Ice Cube from the off.

The 9-3 win represented a remarkable recovery for the Swedes, who had been heavily beaten by Italy in their semi-final while the British pair were engaged in a battle that went to the last stone against Norway.

However, missing out in the bronze medal decider was a hard loss to take for Dodds and Mouat who went into the event as reigning world champions and must now recover ahead of taking part in the men’s and women’s events which begin tomorrow.

“We’re obviously gutted,” said Mouat. 

“We’ve put in a lot of effort in the last two months to get to this point and have these two games. Yesterday’s match (the semi-final v Norway) was such a good performance, probably one of our best of the week which we really felt we should have turned into a win.

“So, it’s gutting to leave this mixed doubles tournament without a medal, because it really felt like we were on form to win one and I was very relaxed going into this game because I thought if we played our best game we were going to win.”

The world’s number one ranked men’s skip said they would be determined to use these playoff losses as additional motivation to do themselves and the country proud when they return to the ice, though.

“I’ve been in the men’s team for five years now and we have trained unbelievably hard for this moment,” Mouat continued.

“We are so fortunate to have so much funding from The National Lottery and everyone that plays the lottery back home and supports our dreams, we can’t thank them enough. So, we are very sorry that we weren’t able to get that medal for Team GB.

“It’s so nice to have that kind of backing from the public, who get involved in curling for this three weeks, so I don’t want to let my team down by feeling sorry for myself for one event that’s not gone right for us.

“Both of us are going to turn it round. We are both going to play amazing next week, I’m sure. I’ve got four great guys who will have my back for this loss and I’ll have their back next week when I try to skip them to a medal.

“I feel pride to know that we get so much funding because we are an amazing team. We’ve won medals at World Championships, European Championships, both in our men’s and women’s teams. That’s where the funding comes from.”

As to the discomfort of knowing that the match was effectively over after five ends, he added: “It’s nice to have curling on the TV back home, but to be 9-1 down in a match like this is not exactly a fun situation to be in. You just have to get on with it and suck it up.”

Starting with the hammer, Team GB had only been able to score a single at the opening end and they were in serious trouble at the next when Almida de Val’s millimetre perfect double takeout removed both British stones in the house to secure a four.

The match was then close to being unrecoverable after three ends when Dodds, confronted by a very difficult situation with three Swedish stones around the button protected by a Swedish guard, missed everything with her attempt at a double takeout, leaving her team 7-1 behind.

In bidding to set up situations that would allow them to register the big counts required to get back into the match, they had to take risks. 

However, with multiple men’s World Champion Oskar Eriksson performing at his very best, the Swedes were clinically accurate in response, claiming a steal at the fourth, then another when their opponents used their powerplay as play resumed after the midway break, to be 9-1 up.

While Dodds and Mouat finally added to their score at the sixth end, a 9-3 deficit was too much to deal with and they conceded the match at that point, knowing their challenge was over.

“The Swedes came out firing today,” said Dodds.

“That shot that Almida made in the second end was amazing in a bronze medal game and I can’t think of a shot Oskar missed the whole game. They just played great and we couldn’t keep up with them, which sums the game up.”

She said they had felt confident about the way they had dealt with the disappointment of their semi-final loss, but with a day off before their men’s and women’s campaigns get underway, will now re-focus completely.

“I think we did everything we wanted to in order to park the semi-final and re-set. It was always going to be hard to recover from, but we did everything we wanted to do to come into today’s game and I think we both felt pretty good and knew a medal was still up for grabs. So I don’t think we would have changed anything we did over the last 12 hours or so.

“We tried to bounce back as hard as we could but today wasn’t our day, but we are going to go into our men’s and women’s teams as normal.  We have trained so hard back home at the National Curling Academy in Stirling and we have prepared for these back-to-back competitions.

“Our strength and conditioning coaches have put us in a really good physical position to keep us going during this competition. We knew it was going to be tough and we’ve had our sports psychologists on hand any time if we needed to speak to them.

“Before coming out here we put in so much preparation on what-if scenarios, if we medalled, if we didn’t medal, so we have gone through all those processes, so the plan is to go out there and be strong with our teams, because we know we have another two medals we can go for.”

In doing so, both will bring valuable information about ice conditions to their teams, while Dodds will be supported by the one member of the British Curling squad who has previous Olympic experience in her skip Eve Muirhead.

“This is Eve’s fourth time at an Olympics and the other three are stepping on Olympic ice for the first time on Thursday. I just want to be there in the team doing the best I can for them and I’m sure they want to do the same for me,” she said