By Betsefy
Great Britain‘s men’s curling team opened their Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics account in strong style with a 7-5 win over Italy on Thursday.
The team of Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan Jr could not be separated from their counterparts at the halfway point with the scores level at 3-3, but a steal for two points in the seventh end proved decisive.
GB just about managed to take the final point of the contest with the hammer in the 10th end, with Mouat’s team now seeking to make it two wins from two against the USA on Friday.
Speaking to BBC Sport after the win, skip Mouat said: “I was looking forward to them [my team] getting to experience it. We obviously didn’t have the best of starts but we settled into it and got going. This is where I feel at home with the boys and I’m happy to be back on the ice with them.
“Winning the first few games is always important to get that momentum going for the week. Italy’s always going to be a tough opponent, they’re going to be on a high with their medal [in the mixed doubles] last week. We had to come out and perform and we’re really chuffed that we did.”
Hardie added: “They [Italy] are a very good team but we knew that we’d get our chances in the second half which we did – Bruce made a couple of great shots to take advantage of their misses and we had control coming home.”
However, GB’s women fell to a 6-5 defeat to Switzerland after 11 ends in their opening game, with Sweden now lying in wait for Eve Muirhead‘s team later on Thursday.
