Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds miss out on curling bronze at Winter Olympics

Great Britain’s hopes of winning a first medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics were dashed in a 9-3 mixed doubles curling defeat to Sweden.

Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds hoped to bounce back from Monday’s semi-final defeat to Norway by repeating their round-robin win over the Swedes.

But a brilliant shot by Almida De Val to score four for Sweden in the second end effectively ended the British pair’s chances of bronze.

It proved a crushing blow for Mouat and Dodds, who entered the competition as world champions and had high hopes of success after a solid start to the round-robin programme.

“It’s pretty gutting to leave this mixed doubles tournament without a medal because it really felt like we were on form to win one,” Mouat said.

“It’s pretty raw. We’ve put in a lot of effort in the last two months to really try hard and get to this point. It really felt like we should probably have turned (Monday night’s) game into a win.”

Mouat and Dodds had reserved their best performance of the week for Monday night’s semi-final, which they led for more than half the match before the Norwegians nudged ahead to claim a place in the gold medal match.

Any hopes the Britons had of making the podium were blown apart by De Val’s brilliant work to score four in the second, followed by an error from Dodds in the next to hand the Swedes three more points against the ‘hammer’, or final stone.

From that point bronze was a virtual impossibility and, despite scoring a two in the sixth end, Mouat and Dodds bowed to the inevitable and conceded with two ends to spare.

It's pretty raw. We've put in a lot of effort in the last two months to really try hard and get to this point. It really felt like we should probably have turned (Monday night's) game