CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Brad Jacobs’ teammates called him “a killer” after the semi-finals, and on Saturday evening in Cortina, he took out Great Britain to win his second Olympic gold medal and a fifth men’s curling title for Canada.
His opposite number, Bruce Mouat, threw the last stone, but Jacobs and his teammates were already hugging each other when it was halfway down the sheet. They had seen enough. Mouat needed a miracle, and it was not coming.
“We played a really good last end, and I knew before Bruce’s last one that the game was over,” said Canada’s Ben Hebert. “The smiles crept in, and it was pretty special. It was a tough battle.”
That sealed a 9-6 victory for Canada that looked very unlikely half an hour before when Mouat, arguably the best shot-maker on the planet, uncorked another double take-out to give the British a 5-4 lead after six ends.
But Jacobs and his teammates did not blink. They traded single-point ends with the Brits over the next two frames to go into the penultimate end still a point down but with last-stone advantage.
Canada’s Brett Gallant and Great Britain skip Bruce Mouat shake hands after the game. (Marco Bertorello / AFP via Getty Images)
It is a position Jacobs and his veteran crew have been in many times before, and they played it beautifully. With Mouat’s two stones still to play, GB called a timeout to talk through their options. Canada had three stones in scoring positions, and they were spread across the house, like a split in bowling.
Did Mouat have another rabbit in his hat? No, he did not. And having so expertly set up a winning position, Jacobs was not going to spurn it. The only consolation for GB was that Jacobs was an inch or two away from taking four in the ninth end, not three.
That gave Canada an 8-6 lead going into the last end. Mouat, the 2023 and 2025 world champion, would have the last stone, though. So, there was a gold medal still to be claimed.
And that is precisely what Jacobs did. The 40-year-old was the winning skip in 2014 — the last time Canada won the title — and teammates Hebert and Marc Kennedy were on the gold medal-winning team in 2010. Proven winners, then.
“Early on in that game, we had to really weather the storm,” Jacobs said. “We were a little bit off, and they were outplaying us. But I had a really strong feeling that if we could get that game into the later stages, things would turn our way. And sure enough, they did.”
For Mouat and Great Britain, the long wait goes on. Team GB’s only triumph in this competition came at the first Winter Olympics in 1924. It is back-to-back silver medals for Mouat, after losing in an extra end in 2022. He also finished fourth in the mixed doubles here, after topping the round-robin phase.
“We wanted to win it for each other,” Hardie said. “The pain from four years ago was that much, we thought let’s go and give it another go. We gave ourselves the chance. So much good work to try and redeem ourselves, but unfortunately, we’ve not got there again.“
At 31, Mouat is young and talented enough to come back. Just look at Jacobs. He waited 12 years between triumphs, and he might not be finished yet, either.
“One-hundred per cent,” Mouat said of his intention to return. “I love this game, I love my teammates. I’m not done yet.”
For Canada, the win put a satisfying cap on a tournament that started with some drama. In the Canadians’ third game of the round-robin phase, Kennedy got into a heated dispute with the Swedish team after they claimed he had been illegally touching the stones on his throws.
“I’ll probably be on a social media blackout for the rest of my life after what I’ve experienced this week,” Kennedy said.
Canada beat Sweden that night to get to 3-0, then lost to Switzerland the next afternoon as talk of the incident still swirled. It could’ve been the start of a tailspin, but instead, Canada reeled off four more wins before dropping a meaningless (to them, at least) round-robin finale against Norway. They then played Norway again in the semi-finals, beating them this time before finishing the job Saturday.
“A weaker team would have fallen flat on its face, but we didn’t,” Kennedy said. “We rose above it and stood on top of the podium as a group.”
Added Jacobs: “To be able to work through that, and have each others’ backs, is really very special.”