Bruce Mouat hailed a job well done as he and Jen Dodds earned Team GB another curling quota place at next year’s Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
The duo sealed one of the seven spots on offer at the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship in Aberdeen by sealing their place in the semi-finals with eight wins from the nine round-robin matches and top spot in Group A.
And it means that Team GB will make its Olympic debut in the mixed doubles, having narrowly missed out on a mixed doubles spot at Pyeongchang 2018, after Scotland beat Korea 9-1 and triumphed 7-4 over Hungary on the final day of group-stage action.
A last-four clash against the winner of the qualification game between Canada and Switzerland now awaits, and medals are on the mind.
“You always have the feeling you're here to qualify Team GB for the Olympics so that's job one done,” Mouat said.
“We are really excited, but now it's onto the second job at the competition. We are here to win a World Championship.
“We know that Hungary will always be tough opponents. They maybe haven’t had their best week, but we were up for the challenge to finish off the group stages, so it was a good way to come out of a round-robin and into the play-offs."
Qualification means Mouat will have the chance to feature twice in China, having already qualified for the men’s event through Scotland’s silver medal at the World Men’s Curling Championship last month.
Similarly to that event in Calgary, the Scottish rink have shone here with a shock 7-6 defeat to Russia the only blot on their copybook.
Since that setback, Mouat and Dodds have been exemplary in their resolve to beat the Czech Republic, Germany and Canada before their two most recent wins on the final day of the round robin.
And that came after earlier wins over Italy, Australia and Spain - all of which leaves Dodds confident of success over the weekend.
“It’s just keeping the momentum going,” she said.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence in our play just now, so we wanted to come out and keep playing like we have over the last couple of games. We felt like we did that and it was good preparation for the play-offs, since Hungary are stiff opposition.
“You know they are never going to be far away with shots and they played really well, so we had to play some really clutch shots to get the win."
Photo Credit: WCF/Celine Stucki
Sportsbeat 2021