Curling-Edin and Sweden complement the Olympic collection with gold
BEIJING: Niklas Edin led Sweden to their first Olympic curling gold for men with victory over Great Britain in the final at the National Aquatics Center on Saturday.
Sweden triumphed 5-4 in the extra time, which made Edin the most decorated ship in history after adding the only title that had escaped him in his glittering career.
Bruce Mouat’s Great Britain saved his best performance in the tournament until the showdown but was played out by the almost 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 remove the Swedish stone in the button, which gave his opponents victory before Edin could even throw his last stone.
“We are very disappointed,” Mouat said. “We gave them a big lead and we had to fight back. We have been preparing for this for about five years and this is the moment we were hoping to win it.”
However, there was a golden edge for Great Britain, as their second place gave the nation its first medal at the Beijing Olympics.
Edin, together 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 came one step closer.
They were in fourth place in Vancouver 2010, won bronze in Sochi in 2014 and finished second in Pyeongchang four years ago. Their collection is finally ready.
“God, it’s nice,” said the 36-year-old Edin, who has undergone 10 surgeries in the past decade after a series of injuries.
“It’s unbelievable … It’s obviously been an incredibly long journey with pretty disappointing defeats in a couple of the previous Olympics.
“It makes it even sweeter now that we’ve reached the top of the podium. The pressure and the monkey are gone from our backs … We knew this was missing in our CV, more than anyone else, and we knew it was in our grasp. .
“It’s really great to achieve this with a group of great friends and great athletes. It feels like there are very few athletes who are more worthy of this than us.”
Edin has won five world championships, including the last three, and seven European crowns among many other awards, but said that it had not completely sunk in that he had finally won Olympic gold.
“I think I might wake up tomorrow morning and wonder if we have another match to play,” Edin added. “It feels so crazy, I almost had to ask someone before I came here: ‘We won, right?’
“There are a lot of emotions out there … We felt we were worthy champions but it still felt completely crazy and when it actually happens it’s hard to understand.
“It may take time. It will feel as good as it can be for a long time now.”
(Reporting by Hritika Sharma; Editing by Clare Fallon and Andrew Cawthorne)