Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat reckoned they benefited from focusing on enjoying themselves as they got off to a winning start as they began their Olympic campaign with a victory over Sweden, another of the teams expected to contend for medals.
With the Team GB pair going into the event as reigning world champions, while Oskar Eriksson is a multiple men’s world champion and Almida de Val a junior world champion, it was a surprisingly scrappy encounter as both teams took time to adjust to the conditions in Beijing’s Ice Cube.
After missing opportunities at the opening two ends, having started with last stone advantage, Mouat set up the third end well, allowing Dodds to produce a well-executed angled promotion that generated a count of three to put them in a strong position, but mistakes at the next two allowed the Swedes to edge into a 5-4 lead. 
At the sixth end, after opting to use their powerplay, but failing to capitalise, Dodds had to produce a pressure draw when facing four Swedish counters in order to register the shot that levelled things.
However, the match turned at the seventh end as the Swedes also struggled on their own powerplay, Eriksson making a string of uncharacteristic mistakes in twice completely missing the head, before he failed with an attempted promotion and when de Val’s final stone crashed on the guard Dodds had put up with her last delivery, the British pair were handed an 8-5 advantage playing the last.
It was still not over, though, as the standard was upped with both pairs drawing well at that final end, but it again came down to a mistakes as de Val was left the chance of a take-out to take the match into an extra end, only for the Swede to miss her target stone completely on the big swinging ice to hand Team GB a 9-5 win.
“It felt really good to be on the ice and curling,” Mouat said afterwards.
“We’ve obviously been waiting five or six days since we got here, but we’re having a lot of fun just soaking up the Olympic atmosphere and we’re absolutely buzzing to start with a win. It gives us a lot of momentum going forward.”
Dodds echoed those sentiments, saying: “It was great to be in an Olympic arena. It was both of our Olympic debuts, so we’re soaking in the atmosphere and I think that’s all you can do.
“You just have to embrace these moments because you never know when they’ll come around again, so there was a lot of excitement and a wee bit of nerves from us, but once we got going you could feel the nerves settling down and it’s just so much fun out there and we can’t wait for tomorrow morning.
“The first game’s obviously nerve-wracking at an Olympics, so we’ve probably now got a wee bit more of a grip of the ice and what it’s doing throughout the game which means we can be a wee more prepared for tomorrow. It reduces the nerves a wee bit and we can get into our flow.”
While it was a first Olympic outing for both they are highly experienced on the global stage and are also benefiting from a support team which includes their team coach Greg Drummond and British Curling’s Olympic Head Coach David Murdoch, who won silver together at the Sochi Games and Mouat said their knowhow has proven very helpful.
“They’re giving us a lot of their knowledge that they gained from Sochi and Dave obviously goes back a wee bit further than that as well, so we’re taking all their advice and having a good time together. Going forward we’ll definitely lean on them when it comes to crunch time,” he said.
However, he also felt that he and Dodds had benefited from reacting slightly better to the tricky and changing conditions in the arena.
“The ice definitely got slower,” he said.
“Both of us noticed that at the fifth end. I played a few draws at that end and we got a good grasp of what the ice was doing again, so we were trying to put Almida under some pressure and that’s exactly what we managed to do at the seventh end which came off the best way for us.”
PICS: TEAM GB/DAVID PEARCE
Schedule: (Beijing time + 8 hours ahead of UK)
2 FebruarySession 1 - GB v Sweden 9-53 FebruarySession 2 - 09.05 - GB v CanadaSession 4 - 20.05 - GB v Switzerland
4 FebruarySession 6 - 13.35 - GB v Australia5 FebruarySession 8 - 14.05 - GB v Czech RepublicSession 9 - 20.05 - GB v Italy6 FebruarySession 10 - 09.05 - GB v ChinaSession 12 - 20.05 - GB v Norway7 FebruarySession 13 - 09.05 - GB v USASession 14 - 20.05 - Semi Final (1v4 & 2&3)8 FebruarySession 15 - 14.05 - Bronze Medal GameSession 16 - 22.05 - Gold Medal Game
