A new king of curling could well be crowned on Saturday: Mouat the Bruce.
Bearing the same name as the eminent 14th century Scottish warrior king Robert the Bruce, Mouat has fought off the challenges and helped Team GB soar into an Olympic curling final.
Victory against Niklas Edin's Sweden would earn Great Britain a first curling gold medal since 2002.
The 27-year-old skip, supported by his team of Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan Jr, boasted a 2021 to remember ahead of Beijing with a hat-trick of Grand Slam wins, making history as the first non-Canadian rink to do achieve the feat.
Winning silverware has long been a consistent aspect of Mouat’s curling career, first skipping his initial squad with Lammie to back-to-back Scottish junior titles in 2015 and 2016.
Hardie and his cousin McMillan Jr joined Mouat ahead of the 2017/18 campaign, and the rink went on to win the Grand Slam national during their first season together and later the European championships in November.
Mouat revealed his family were instrumental in supporting his journey into professional curling, noticing his keen enthusiasm for sport at an early age.
He said: “My mum and dad always supported me through school - they realised I wasn’t the most academic, so they were quite keen for me to focus on something that I loved and that was always sport.
“When I found curling and I really took to it, I basically got their blessing to really pursue it. It’s led me to where I am and going to the Olympics.
“Now my entire family have curled for about twenty years and we love it. It’s a great family sport.”
While always a reliable performer on the ice, Mouat noticed his game improve soon after he came out.
He explained: “In my sporting career, the only kind of barrier that I was going through myself – it wasn’t anything the sport was putting on me – was coming out as a gay man.
“I thought that I wasn’t going to be accepted in the sport but eventually I got completely accepted by everyone in the sport and it’s never held me back.
“To be honest, I think it’s made me a better curler.”
Having taken the curling circuit by storm in 2021, Mouat got on the plane to Beijing in search of two gold medals, eager to claim a podium in the mixed doubles as well as the men’s.
Together with childhood friend Jen Dodds, who will play in the women’s final on Sunday as second for Team Muirhead, Mouat came up short in the bronze medal match against Sweden ten days ago, but both are now guaranteed to leave with medals.
When asked to describe Mouat, Dodds said: “He’s just a great human being, that’s all I can describe him as. He’s just an amazing person.
“He’s so determined. Off ice, he’s so laid back, so funny and doesn’t take life too seriously which is probably a wee bit opposite to him when he’s on ice.”
Ahead of his final at the Ice Cube, Mouat has played 40 hours of curling in 16 days at the Beijing Games, but the skip will be eager to make every second count as he hunts down gold against Sweden.