Fresh from maintaining their season-long 100 per cent mixed doubles record in a high class field at The Geneva Mixed Doubles Invitational, Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds have arrived in the USA aiming to generate more pre-Olympic momentum at a historic Grand Slam event.
The World champion men’s skip and reigning Olympic women’s curling champion faced the only teams that are currently above them in the mixed doubles world rankings, Estonia’s Kaldvee and Lill and Australia’s Gill and Hewitt, as well as Yannick Schwaller, skip of the team ranked third in the men’s rankings and his wife Briar at the Geneva event last week. 
A run which saw them lift the title by beating all of those potential rivals twice, matched their unbeaten run when winning the Stirling Mixed Doubles International at the beginning of the season and demonstrated that, in spite of having relatively few opportunities to compete together, they are managing to find a working balance.
“It felt like Jen and I played some really good curling last week and hopefully we can bring some of that into our men’s and women’s teams this week,” said Mouat.
The Kioti GSOC Tahoe is meanwhile the first ever Grand Slam event to be staged outside Canada, bringing Mouat back to the part of the world that generated one of the early highlights of his world number one ranked men’s team’s career when they made the podium at their first ever World Championship together in 2018.
“It’s been a tight turn-around to get here, but we’ve had a nice couple of days in San Francisco and we make the most of getting to explore new cities and this is one of the cooler places that we’ve got to visit,” he said.
“It’s nice to be back in America and especially in Nevada.
“Our first World Championship as a team was in Las Vegas, so it feels like we’re close… we’re probably not that close but at least we’re in the same state and we’re excited to play in Nevada again.
“We had very good experiences in 2018, so we’re looking to enjoy ourselves as much as we did back then and it’s quite exciting to be involved in the first Slam outside Canada.
“I’m really enjoying what The Curling Group are doing with the Slams.
“They’ve increased their inclusivity, like having the wheelchair athletes at the first Slam and the juniors at the last one and they’ve now got a military invitational this time, so we’re bringing in new communities into the sport, trying to grow it.”
While Mouat and teammates Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan are the defending champions, having won this event when it was known as the Kioti National last season and come in on the back of winning their 11th Grand Slam title at the Tour Challenge last month, they are just part of a powerful Scottish contingent.
In the men’s event they are accompanied by Team Whyte (Ross Whyte, Robin Brydone, Craig Waddell and Euan Kyle), who followed up on winning their first Grand Slam title last season, by reaching the final of the Masters in September as they just missed out on completing a successful title defence, while 2018 Olympian Kyle Waddell and his young teammates Mark Watt, Angus Bryce and Blair Haswell reached the quarter-finals of The Tour Challenge.
Team Morrison (Rebecca Morrison, Jen Dodds, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson) have meanwhile been rewarded for their climb through the rankings in the early part of the season with their first invitation of the season to a Tier One Grand Slam event at what Mouat noted is an important stage of this crucial campaign.
“It’s great to have the three Scottish men’s teams at a Slam again and then Team Morrison qualifying for the Tier One in their Olympic season, which is really encouraging for all four,” he said.
“For my team and Rebecca’s team we’re trying to ramp up the momentum heading into the Olympics and playing against the best teams in the world is a good place to be doing that, so it should be a really good week for all of us.”
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