Scottish athletes have returned from the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games after a strong showing for Team GB which brought multiple new records, impressive Olympic debuts and a silver medal for Team Mouat.
The eyes of the world were on Italy for the 19 days of competition with nearly 3000 athletes competed for 90 countries. And Team GB delivered, never before had Team GB won more than one gold medal at a Winter Olympics, the three gold was a best ever and the five in total equalled the record totals in 2014 and 2018.
Curling once again had the nation gripped throughout roller-coaster campaigns for the 10 Scottish curlers competing in the men’s, women’s and mixed. Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat lost out in the bronze medal match in the mixed for the second successive Olympics after winning eight of their nine group stages matches.
There was more heartache for Dodds and her Team Morrison teammates, Sophie Jackson, Sophie Sinclair and Rebecca Morrison, in the women’s event as they came agonisingly close to a semi-final place. Their win against Italy in the last match would’ve been enough to progress had Switzerland defeated the United States but that result didn’t go their way..
Team Mouat’s bid to better the silver medal they won in Beijing was similarly fraught. Four defeats in the round robin section meant Bruce Mouat, Hammy McMillan, Grant Hardie and Bobby Lammie had to rely on other results to go their way to progress. They held their nerve to comfortably beat the United States in the last match and it was Switzerland who done them a favour by securing their ninth win out of nine and set up a semi-final against Team GB.
Team Mouat would hand the Swiss their first defeat in a tense semi-final that went down to the final stone. The 7-5 win meant they would face Canada for the gold medal on Saturday night. In another nerve-wracking match, Canada would prevail 9-6 meaning Team Mouat won silver for consecutive Olympics.
The final was watched by a peak audience of over 5million people, showing the spotlight the curlers have brought to their sport.
Bruce Mouat said: “I think we put ourselves in a really good position to win the game. It just came down to a few shots in the ninth and tenth — all of us missed one. We’re disappointed — very disappointed — but we battled so hard all week just to get here.
“I’m trying to remind myself how much of a fight it was even to win a medal. I’m incredibly proud to be able to say I’m a two-time Olympic medallist."
In total there were three fourth-placed finishes for Scottish athletes. As well as Bruce and Jen, freestyle skier Kirsty Muir came painfully close to a bronze medal twice. Just 0.41 of a point was the difference between bronze and fourth place in the slopestyle. Agonisingly, she then recorded another fourth in the Big Air.
After the Big Air event, Kirsty said: “I'm a bit up and down at the moment. I'm not really sure how to feel.
"I put it all out there so I'm really proud of that. On the third run, I went for a trick I haven't landed before so I gave it my all and I am taking that with me.”
In cross-country skiing, Andrew Musgrave and James Clugnet recorded a fifth-place finish in the team sprint event, the nation's best Olympic result in the sport.
That bettered Musgrave's sixth in the 10km interval start freestyle, while Anna Pryce recorded a best British women's result at an Olympics with her 32nd place in the sprint classic.
In figure skating Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson finished seventh in ice dance and there was an impressive Olympic debut for Luke Digby and Anastasia Vaipin-Law.
