Bruce Mouat’s team to represent Scotland at World Men’s Curling Championship
It will be the first time in more than a year that skip Bruce Mouat and team-mates Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan will have the chance to compete internationally.
The team have dominated domestically for the past year, winning every elite level event played on Scottish ice since the beginning of 2020.
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Hide AdThe World Men’s Curling Championship will take place from April 3-11 and it is the fourth successive year Mouat’s team have been picked to represent Scotland.
Special bubble conditions have been introduced at the venue at Markin MacPhail Centre in Calgary’s Olympic Park to allow for the staging of a series of events which began last week with the Canadian Women’s Championship, The Scotties.
Mouat and team should have played in the World Championship on home ice in Glasgow last year but it was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
That tournament should have been the first of two men’s World Championships that would have seen points accrued towards Winter Olympic qualification. However, its cancellation has upped the ante this year, with the top six finishers in the 14-team event in Calgary qualifying automatically to go to next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, so avoiding the cut-throat qualifying competition.
Mouat said: “After the disappointment of the cancelled World Champs last year which was really hard to take at the time, we are over the moon to get the selection and to get another chance to go.
“We are so excited and after everything that has happened over the last year we wanted to jump at this opportunity and know that entering that Calgary bubble for five weeks is going to be a unique experience.
“We feel incredibly fortunate that British Curling has enabled us to prepare providing training and domestic competition which has put us in a good spot and so despite all the restrictions and cancellations we feel ready to go to the Worlds.”
Ross Whyte, whose team has faced Mouat’s rink in the final of all five events staged at the NCA this season, has been selected to join them as their fifth man.