Bruce Mouat delivers at key moment as Scotland's curlers take gold at European Championships

Scotland skip Bruce Mouat delivered two breathtaking shots in Ostersund on Saturday to clinch a third title in three visits to the Le Gruyere European Curling Championships.

Team Scotland show off their gold medals alongside the women's team/

In a match of extreme intensity and quality, the Scots rink of Mouat, Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan had held the upper hand for most of the afternoon after Switzerland’s Team Schwaller had started with the hammer, a score of two at the fourth end which put them 2-1 ahead, having shifted the advantage in favour of Mouat’s men.

The momentum looked to shift at the ninth end, however, after Scottish vice skip Hardie had produced an extraordinary triple takeout to earn what looked like an opportunity to score the two that would have put his side in control, a fortuitous shot from Switzerland’s Benoit Schwartz made life difficult for Mouat and he was slightly heavy with his final stone, conceding the steal.

Mouat was then faced with even tougher propositions at the final end with a Swiss stone on the button heavily guarded. His first delivery saw him raise a Swiss guard onto his own stone to remove that shot stone and lie two, only for Schwartz to respond well and get another bit of luck as his effort was deflected into a near perfect spot at the back of the button, again well protected. With the shot clock down to 14 seconds as he pushed off from the hack, Mouat calmly repeated the dose, however, with the perfect amount of control to remove it and claim the two that won the match.

“There’s been some amazing pressured shots throughout the event and in that game especially Grant’s amazing shot at the ninth end to give us a really good opportunity was great and obviously the last two at the 10th end to secure the win means a lot,” said Mouat. “I don’t think I’ve ever made two better shots in the 10th end to win a Championship, so I’m very excited.”

The 5-4 win in the final maintained a perfect record at an event they won on their debut in 2018, had to wait three years to go back to, then won again a year ago. “Being three out of three means a lot to us. There’s not a lot of skips that will be able to show that record,” Mouat added.