Having led the dominant team in men’s Grand Slam curling over the past two seasons, Bruce Mouat teamed up with regular mixed doubles partner Jen Dodds to make a dream start to the new season with victory on their first ever appearance together in Canada.
Up against the very best that the host nation could muster, their perfect record through three round-robin matches and then the play-offs at The Hardline Open, put down a significant marker as they made their Grand Slam Mixed Doubles debut in Ontario. 
On a weekend that reinforced the impression of a power-shift across the Atlantic within the sport, three of the four European teams that had entered the 24-team event, had claimed semi-final places.
No combination was more impressive in doing so than last year’s World champions as Mouat and Dodds defeated former Olympic men’s champion skip Brad Jacobs and Kerri Einarson, the Canadian women’s champion skip of the past two years 10-6 to complete a clean sweep of group wins.
They then defeated former Olympic women’s champion skip Jen Jones and three-time world champion Brent Laing 7-5 after an extra and, before setting up a 7-2 lead after six ends of their semi-final against Switzerland’s 2022 Olympic representatives Jenny Perret and Martin Rios, before holding off their late comeback to win 7-6.
The final was their toughest challenge of all as former Canadian mixed doubles champions Laura Walker and Kirk Muyres, who had also won all five matches to that point, scored a two at the opening end, but while it remained tight throughout, the Scots were never behind again after responding with a three at the second end and once again held their nerve to set up the chance for Dodds to draw for the 7-6 win at the extra end.
“We know Laura and Kirk are always going to be tough opponents and they got a good start on us, but we fought back with a three and tried to get control back,” said Dodds, who has stepped back from the women’s game after last season’s Olympic gold medal win, to focus exclusively on mixed doubles.
“It was a bit nervous after we only scored one on our powerplay at the seventh end because they had their powerplay at the eighth, so it’s a wee bit scary playing the final end just one up as it’s quite easy to get twos on the powerplay. However we did a really good job of keeping them to one and at the extra end we both played great to leave the in-turn draw that I wanted for most of the game for the last shot and Bruce just judged it perfectly.” 
Having had an extraordinary run in lucrative Grand Slam men’s events over the past two seasons, including a sequence of five successive appearances in finals which started with three wins in a row and brought four victories overall on their way to becoming the first Scottish men to win The Pinty’s Cup last season, Mouat was delighted to have shown that expertise was transferable to the other discipline.
“Both of us are really excited,” he said.
“The final was a great game. We had played really well all week and the ice was really suited to us, it was fast and it curled hard at the end, so it’s really nice for us to come out to our first Grand Slam of Mixed Doubles together and register a win.
“We’ve got the exciting prospect of another Slam later in the season in Winnipeg and I think that’s us already qualified for the final weekend as well in Branford, so we’ll be looking to keep things going with a couple more mixed doubles events in Europe as well after this great start to our season.”
On an excellent weekend for the British Curling programme, new-look Team Henderson meanwhile claimed their first international success of the new season when, up against some of the best up-and-coming teams in the global game, they lifted the European Junior Curling Tour (EJTC) title in Prague.
After reaching the semi-finals at their only previous EJCT event this season in St Gallen early in September, the British Curling performance foundation quartet of Fay Henderson, Holly Wilkie-Milne, Robyn Munro and Laura Watt, claimed victory on Scottish ice at an Ashram Under-21 Slam the previous week and carried the confidence from that into their trip to the Czech capital.
“We’ve had a pretty good start to the season,” said their skip. 
“It’s been quite an exciting few events with a new line-up, which is always different. We’ve gelled together really well and I think our win last weekend at Greenacres just gave us the confidence.
“We got fourth place out in St Gallen, but we knew that we would be able to perform this weekend after that little bit more time together as a team.
“We all had our ups and downs, but we managed to support each other through that and came away with the win, which is really exciting.”
A key performance was their defeat of Japan’s Team Miura in the semi-final.
“That was obviously a very big one because that team is current World Junior champions, so it was good to claim a win there,” said Henderson.
“We were a few down, but we never gave up fighting and got there after a couple of steals.”
“Then in the final we were up against a team we’d played in the round-robin and we’d got a win against them, so it was nice to put in another good performance.”
That positions them well for the challenges ahead this season.
“Obviously this is quite good in terms of our goals moving forward in the season,” said Henderson.
“Our ultimate goal is the Scottish Junior Championship, but we’ve just got to work towards that and we just have to make sure we’re as well prepared as possible.
“Our training in the NCA helps with that because we’ve had some good team sessions and a good start with our training which set us up for the season.”
Images: Team GB / David Pearce
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