After winning the only Grand Slam of Curling event played so far this season, Team Mouat will also be defending their title when they take to the ice at the CO-OP Canadian Open Alberta this week (November 5-10).
Former world champions Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan added to their record as the most successful non-Canadian quartet in the history of Grand Slams when they claimed The Hearing Life Tour Challenge title last month and currently ranked top of the global standings they head to The Silent Ice Centre in Nisku among the favourites. 
However, as skip Bruce Mouat noted, they are also looking to find their best form ahead of the latest defence of their European Championships title later this month as they look to build on another formidable record, having won that event all four times they have competed in it.
“We’re looking forward to playing in our second Slam of the season,” he said.
“It will be a busy block for us over the next month getting some games against some world class teams leading in to what will be a very tough Europeans again.
“That is exactly what we need and what we are hoping for from this week.
“It was really nice to win the first Slam of the season, it put us in a really good stead for what is obviously a tough end to this year.
“We’ve got lots of big competitions coming up, with the main focus on the Europeans to qualify Scotland for the Worlds and playing the Slams is always a lot of fun and playing in arenas and getting to play in front of crowds is part of the reason why we curl.
“We really enjoy these events and it should be a very good event in Nisku and we expect to have quite of lot of people coming to watch hopefully.”
This will be their first outing together since winning The Tour Challenge, but Mouat and Lammie both maintained winning form in the interim, winning tour titles in mixed doubles with women’s teammates Jen Dodds and Rebecca Morrison respectively.
However, they have put in plenty of work in training and feel ready to go again.
“The boys and I haven’t played together since the last Slam and some of us had some mixed doubles duties to go and compete in Switzerland, so we really enjoyed that and we are looking forward to getting back on the ice with the boys as team mates rather than rivals,” said Mouat.
“We have put in a lot of work, Hammy especially in the NCA because he wasn’t in Switzerland with us and over the last week the boys and I all had some team sessions where we worked on a few things that we thought we could work on heading into the Euros, so this is a pretty important week for us to hopefully build or continue that form that we had in September and October time.”
They are by no means the only Scots with title aspirations this week, however and having reached the knockout stages at the last seven Grand Slam events, Ross Whyte, Robin Brydone, Duncan McFadzean and Euan Kyle believe they are ready to make a breakthrough by going a step further than last year when they were beaten in the final of The Masters. 
“We are on a bit of a streak on qualifying at Grand Slams which is nice knowing that every time we go out here we have always got a good chance of qualifying and potentially going on to do better things in making finals and hopefully winning events,” said skip Whyte.
“We feel very comfortable in these Slams and always look forward to them as our main competitions throughout the season and we always put a lot of emphasis on the weeks before these events to train well and make sure we are in a good spot before we get here.
“Dunc and I had the mixed doubles and Robin and Euan were training a lot in the NCA and when we came back we knew they were in a good place.
“Dunc and I obviously had less time to train but were competing so it was good for us and though it was a little bit stop and start with preparing our bodies for this event, we seem to be ready to go.
“We are feeling good for this week and hopefully we can continue that streak for qualifying and go on and do really well.”
James Craik, Mark Watt, Angus Bryce and Blair Haswell have meanwhile established themselves as regulars at the Slams over the past year and having worked their way through to the quarter-finals at three of the five they have played in they are getting used to the intensity of the environment.
“Becoming regulars at these events is really cool and we are getting noticed a lot around Canada and I feel like as a team we are more comfortable in the Slams these days,” said 2022 World Junior champion skip Craik.
“It is still such an exciting experience and the novelty of it definitely hasn’t worn off.
“It is still a new experience every time we come here and we are always super pumped to be here.”
While he is not overawed by the prospect, the 23-year-old also admitted that the opportunity to open the event against one of the greatest teams in the history of the sport led by seven-time world champion skip Niklas Edin, only adds to that specialness. 
“We are in a new place, we have never been here before and we are really excited about getting things kicked off as we start against Edin in the first game and he is someone I have been watching for years so it is great now that at this stage we are getting to play against these amazing players who have been around for so long but have also seriously carved a pathway into the game and the way it is played today,” Craik observed.
He and his teammates are looking to draw upon reaching the last eight at the Tour Challenge last month as they look for more consistency heading into one of the most intense periods of the season.
“Making the play-offs in Red Deer was really good for us,” said Craik.
“We have had an up and down season so far and a few unlucky breaks so to make the play-offs in the Tour Challenge was a real big confidence booster for us and we managed to follow that up with a pretty good weekend in Bern last week where we made the semi finals.
“We again had some good performances and a few not so good ones, but we will take the positives out of that event and I feel like that has really set us up really well heading into this event with a lot of confidence.
“We have to go out there and do our best and play our best curling and hopefully after eight ends we are the ones with the win on the board.
“We put in a good amount of preparation for this event. Obviously the turn-around from Bern coming into this Slam was a little bit shorter than we would have liked but that is the way the schedule fell.
“However we have come out here nice and early and have got used to the jetlag and we have managed to get ice and have a little bit of a training camp out here in Edmonton for a couple of days, so we have thrown a ton of rocks as a team and got really dialled in with some of the technical things we have been working on and are more than ready to get going this week.”
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Images: Ross Whyte image -PPA Graeme Hart, Team Mouat and Team Craik images - Anil Mungal - GSOC
