Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat left gutted after Team GB shock | Other | Sport
Team GB’s mixed doubles curling team Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat suffered heartbreak in their semi-final at the Winter Olympics.
The British duo went into the semi against Sweden as favourites, having finished top of their round-robin group. The only loss in the group stage was against their opponents.
It seems that the Swedes were the bogey team, though, with Great Britain falling to a 9-3 loss to end their hopes of picking up a gold or silver medal. They will now go into the bronze medal match, where they take Italy after their loss to the USA.
It’s the second time in the two Winter Olympic cycles that the duo have missed out on a place in the gold medal match. It was a similar story in Beijing four years ago; that time, they missed out on third place, something that they will look to change this time around.
The damage was done in the fifth end, with poor shots from both players allowing Sweden’s brother and sister duo of Rasmus Wrana and Isabella Wrana claim five points on their power play. That put them into an 8-3 lead.
At the time, BBC Sport commentator Steve Cram said: “The Swedes are trying not to get ahead of themselves but this could be a match-winning moment.”
Sweden then scored another in the seventh end to put them into an unassailable lead, which led to handshakes with one end remaining.
Richard Winton of BBC Sport, who is out in Cortina, said: “Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds leave the arena looking disconsolate, and no wonder. They’ve been in this movie before, in Beijing four years ago, and had their heart broken in the bronze-medal match.”
Responding to the loss, Mouat told BBC Sport: “We’re really gutted.
“We’ve had such a good week and it was quite exciting for us to go into this game feeling the way we were feeling but to come out and not even play close to the way we wanted to is hard to put into words really. They were the better team today.”
Dodds has also revealed how they will look to bounce back for the bronze medal match, which will take place at 1.05pm on Tuesday. “We’ll probably speak to our coaches and speak things through and regroup for tomorrow,” she said.
“We don’t want this to affect our chances of a medal tomorrow so we’ll speak about the things that need to be spoken about and corrected and we’ll come out firing tomorrow.”
