Winter Olympics: Bruce Mouat threw stone 'as hard as I could' to help Team GB close in on curling semi-finals

With three tricky games to come in the round-robin stage, Mouat’s rink have five of the six wins they need to guarantee a shot at a medal on their Games debut.

The fifth victory was the toughest yet and relied on the skip delivering a clutch last stone, chipping out a red Swiss stone to earn a vital victory.

“We needed to come out and win that one to keep our hopes for the play-offs alive, so it was a big game,” said Mouat, 27.

“They had their backs against the wall and were going to give us a good fight regardless of what was happening elsewhere.

“I'm very happy to get over the line with that one and to play well too.”

On the last stone, Mouat added: “Obviously I had a bit of nerves. It was basically just trying to throw it as hard as I could and give it to the sweepers!

“I tried to throw it half-stone and let Bobby (Lammie) take it back a wee bit and that's exactly what he did. I always feel confident when Hammy (McMillan) and Bobby are standing by.”

It was a very cagey start with the first end blanked and both teams taking just one with the hammer in the second and third.

A superb draw into the button saw Mouat take the first two of the match and go 3-1 up.

There was a rare mistake from the skip in the sixth end as a miss allowed the Swiss to steal one and find a foothold once again.

Britain also passed up the chance to blank the seventh end when Mouat was narrowly unable to take out a third red with his penultimate stone.

But he hit back in the eighth, using his own stone to chip out the Swiss and Benoit Schwartz’s runback takeout failed to come off, allowing Britain to steal one back.

The game swung back the other way when Mouat clean missed a takeout with his last stone of the penultimate end and allowed Peter de