Curling-Edin and Sweden complete Olympic collection with gold

BEIJING :Niklas Edin led Sweden to their first men's Olympic curling gold medal with victory over Britain in the final at the National Aquatics Centre on Saturday.

Sweden triumphed 5-4 in the extra end, making Edin the most decorated skip in history after adding the only title that had eluded him in his glittering career.

Bruce Mouat's Britain saved their best performance of the tournament for the showdown but were outplayed by the near-perfect Swedes, with Edin reading the ice well to maintain the upper hand in the close, tactical battle.

Mouat had the chance to potentially lie two and seal the win but could not dislodge the Swedish stone in the button, handing his opponents victory before Edin could even throw his final stone.

"We're very disappointed," Mouat said. "We gave them too much of a head start and we had to battle back. We've been preparing for this for about five years and this is the moment we were hoping to have that win."

There was a silver lining for Britain, however, as their second-placed finish gave the nation its first medal at the Beijing Olympics.

Edin, along with Oskar Eriksson, Rasmus Wranaa and Christoffer Sundgren, had been chasing Olympic gold with Sweden for more than a decade. Every four years, the quartet got one step closer.

They were in fourth place at Vancouver 2010, won bronze in Sochi in 2014 and finished runners-up in Pyeongchang four years ago. Their collection is finally complete.

"God, it's nice," said the 36-year-old Edin, who has undergone 10 operations in the past decade after a series of injuries.

"It's completely unbelievable... It's obviously been an incredibly long journey with pretty disappointing defeats in a couple of the previous Olympic Games.

"It makes it even sweeter now that