By Kevin Snow
Niklas Edin and Bruce Mouat are no strangers to big games. Edin skipped Sweden to a gold medal victory in the 2022 Winter Olympics, defeating Mouat and Great Britain in the process. The pair have also combined to win the last five World Men's Curling Championship titles, with Edin winning three of them.
With the 2026 Winter Olympics less than four months away and both Mouat (Great Britain) and Edin (Sweden) already qualified, you could forgive either of them for looking ahead to the world’s grandest sporting stage. But with four Grand Slam of Curling events still to be played before then, both men insist that staying in the moment is paramount to their team’s success.
Mouat has 10 career Grand Slam titles and set the record with four wins in a single season in 2024-25. He says Team Mouat has built its schedule around the Olympics, but he insists that consistent play in the Grand Slam events is what will determine their final outcome.
"I think the way we treated every single event last year has helped us to be more consistent, which is exactly what we wanted to do. We knew our ceiling was pretty high, but we wanted to raise the floor,” said Mouat, 31. “We always wanted to be consistent at these events and that’s something we’ve done very well. Last season we were able to make a lot of semifinals and finals, and we’re hoping to be similar this year.”
Next year’s Olympics will be the fifth for the 40-year-old Edin, and he reached the podium in each of his previous three trips. In addition to taking home gold in 2022, Edin claimed bronze in 2014 and a silver in 2018, making him the only skip in World Curling history to win three Olympic medals.
Edin has plenty of experience in planning around the Olympics and uses the full four years of the Olympic cycle to prepare his team both mentally and physically.
"You have to start slow and recover from the last Olympics. Now, for the last six months, we have basically taken an all-in approach to getting ready," explained the seven-time world champion. “We’ve done this for two decades, so it’s no problem at all. We know that it’s going to be in February, and we’ve still got work to do. If we do what we have to until then, we’ll be in great shape."
Edin and Mouat have faced each other only once so far this season, with Team Mouat coming out on top 8-3 at the AMJ Masters in September.
The pair definitely bring out the best in each other, and Edin would relish the opportunity to go head-to-head again at the Olympics.
"It’s always fun to face them," he said. "They’ve won so many Slams in the last couple of years and have really got that hunger to win the next Olympics. We won the last one and probably didn’t have that same hunger in the last couple of years, and it’s shown. Now that we’re in an Olympic season, it’s got to be the same kind of hunger again and try to be as good as we were last time.”
WEEKEND RECAP
Team Tirinzoni lost 5-4 to Team Ha in the women’s final of the 14th edition of the Stu Sells Series Toronto Tankard event.
Tirinzoni, the second-ranked team in the world, held a 4-2 advantage after five ends, but Ha picked up a single in each of the final three ends, including a steal in the eighth to claim victory.
Tirinzoni was 3-0 in pool play to extend their scintillating start to the season to 13-1. They added three more wins in the playoff round before being extinguished in the final.
Italy’s Team Constantini (3-2) lost to Team Ha in the quarterfinals, and Team Xenia Schwaller (4-2) of Switzerland also saw their weekend come to an end with a quarterfinal loss. Switzerland’s Team Hürlimann (1-2) didn’t advance to the playoff round.
In the men’s draw, Scotland’s Team Waddell (6-1) lost 7-6 in the final when Team Kean from Canada picked up a single in the eighth end to close it out.
Norway’s Team Ramsfjell (5-2) lost in the semifinals to Waddell, while Team Klima (4-2) of Czechia was knocked out in the quarterfinal round.
