2026 Winter Olympics: Four men, one goal – ending 102-year wait for curling gold

It’s a Thursday night in November. A pub in the Merchant City in Glasgow. Four men, all in their 30s, are sitting around a small table, eating and talking about what the next few months might bring. Nobody recognizes them.

Same bar three months later. The screens showing the Celtic match have been changed so customers can watch the curling game. Almost everyone is staring anxiously at their televisions, ready for these four men to reach the Winter Olympics final.

They will likely do the same on Saturday (18:05 GMT), when Team GB’s Bruce Mowat, Grant Hardie, Hammy McMillan and Bobby Lammy face Canada with a gold medal on the line.

“Our gold medal,” as Mowat referred to it after the epic semi-final win over Switzerland in northern Italy on Thursday – a contest that attracted 3.4 million viewers to the BBC at its peak.

And fulfilling what they believe is their destiny – by upgrading their silver medal they received in Beijing four years ago – is what these four Scots have traveled to Cortina to do.

Since that imminent 2022 event, Mowat’s team has dominated men’s curling, winning two world championships and adding two more European titles, as well as a record 12 Grand Slam titles.

At times, they were unbeatable.

The mantle of invincibility had slipped during the Tour stages here – leaving qualification out of their hands – but that fear has now been forgotten, replaced by a return of clear focus on the task at hand.

But who are these four young men who have now caught the country’s attention? What makes it more than the sum of its parts?