Great Britain beaten by ‘perfect display of curling’ from Sweden in men’s final

Great Britain’s men’s curling team were forced to settle for Olympic silver after succumbing to the “perfect” game by decorated Swedish skip Niklas Edin at the National Aquatics Centre in Beijing.

David Murdoch paid tribute to the 36-year-old Swede, who slowly strangled the life of the British challenge and chiselled a 5-4 extra-end win that added gold to his two previous Olympic medals and five world championship titles.

“You saw there the perfect display of curling, and it’s something we’ve seen from him before,” said British coach Murdoch, a silver medallist himself in Sochi in 2014. “He’s just so clinical and when he makes shots like that he’s really tough to beat.

“The guys tried to ask big questions of him. We forced the pressure as much as as we could, trying to make mistakes and he didn’t make any of them. He’s won five championships and three Olympic medals and he is the greatest in history for me.”

British skip Bruce Mouat will take solace in being almost a decade younger than Edin, and has already started a storied rivalry with his Swedish counterpart.

Of 23 matches between the pair, Edin has won 13, including at the last World Championship in Calgary, although Mouat struck back to win the European final in Lillehammer and also scored a crucial one-point win in the group phase in Beijing.

“Niklas has had such an impressive career and he’s one of the best in curling history,” said Mouat. “He’s an example of what we can do in four years’ time – we just need to get to that point again but make the result different.”

“This result drives us forward, we’ve put in so much work over the last five years. We’ll be driving even harder to get that gold medal next time.”

Mouat’s buoyant team went into the final with the