Beijing 2022 men's curling: Team GB beat USA to advance to gold medal final

Great Britain men's curling team are through to the Olympic gold medal match at Beijing 2022 after beating defending champions United States 8-4 on Thursday (17 February).

The win ensures that Team GB will walk away with at least a silver medal from the Games in the Chinese capital.

The Britons, skipped by Bruce Mouat, got off to shaky start as Team USA made the most of a Mouat error to steal two in the second end and go 2-0 up.

Keeping calm, Team GB responded with a triple in the third to the take the lead.

Britain led 5-4 at the midway point, and they stayed in front as U.S. skip John Shuster opted to blank ends to try and leave himself the hammer in the 10th.

With GB lying one in the ninth, Shuster chose to forgo an easy draw for the single and allow a steal for a 6-4 Britain advantage.

The gamble did not pay off as the American missed with a difficult take-out effort which saw Britain steal two more for an 8-4 victory.

"I'm really struggling to sum it up," said Mouat after a thrilling semi-final. "You saw from our reaction that it just pure elation."

After bumping fists with their opponents, Mouat roared as he joined his rink in celebration. They patted each other on the back in front a small group of delighted supporters, including GB women's skip Eve Muirhead, who cheered their team's achievement.

Mouat admitted to feeling the tension in the closing stages.

He said, "Normally we are quite confident when we are two-up coming home, but we were in an Olympic semi-final so the nerves were obviously there.

"We were just trying to focus on not losing that three. John and his team are so good tactically and really good with the taps so we were expecting him to be really close."

Beijing 2022 men's curling: Britain to meet world champions Sweden in Olympic final

Team GB will face familiar foes Sweden, silver medallists at PyeongChang 2018, in the final after Niklas Edin's rink edged out Canada 5-3.

Edin has five world titles to his name after beating Mouat in last year's final but Olympic gold has thus far eluded him. And the Scots have a good recent record against him including victory in the final of November's European Championships.

Mouat is relishing facing them again saying, "Niklas and his team have been our rivals for so many years now. We've played them in numerous European and World Championships so it feels really nice to be able to play them in a larger final."

Team Mouat also prevailed in their round-robin meeting 7-6, which was a more comfortable triumph than the scoreline would suggest.

Britain's gold medal match against Sweden is on Saturday at 14:05 Chinese Standard Time (CST).

That means expectant British fans will need to set their alarm clocks for a 6:05am start to catch the curlers as they bid to match the women's gold of Rhona Howie, then known as Rhona Martin, and her team at Salt Lake City 2002.