GB men to contest curling final 20 years after Rhona Martin’s ‘Stone of Destiny’

Twenty years after Rhona Martin sent down her famous ‘Stone of Destiny’, Great Britain’s men’s curling team sealed a shot at Olympic gold with a nerve-shredding 8-4 semi-final win over the United States in Beijing.

Martin watched on from her BBC commentary booth as John Shuster’s missed takeout attempt in the final end guaranteed Bruce Mouat’s men a place in the final, where they will meet world champions Sweden on Saturday.

Earlier on a fantastic day for Great Britain at the National Aquatics Centre, Eve Muirhead’s women’s team squeezed into the semi-finals after a 9-4 win over Russia proved just enough to send them them through to the last four.

If Mouat’s men were strongly fancied to reach the final they were wary of Shuster’s rock-and-roll rink, the defending Olympic champions and the only team to have beaten them in their nine round-robin encounters.

But after fighting back from a nightmare start in which they conceded two with the ‘hammer’ in the first end, they led by a point at the halfway stage and forced a series of shut-out ends before building a position from which the Americans could not recover.

“It’s hard to put into words,” said Mouat. “I’m really proud of how we went about this week. We’ve played amazing to get to this point.

“I think for the reaction that I showed, the scream I did at the end, that was a release of tension and pressure.”

Saturday’s clash with the Swedes will be only the second time Great Britain have played in an Olympic final since Martin’s 2002 triumph, after team coach David Murdoch led his team to the silver medal in Sochi.

Referencing the historic Martin moment, Mouat added: “That’s such a big moment for curling back home. We really want to be able to replicate something like that.