World champion skip Bruce Mouat is sure Scotland would be a great choice to host a curling Grand Slam as the tournament series prepares to shift out of Canada for the first time.
Lake Tahoe in the United States is to host November’s event this year, with the organisation’s new ownership open to taking future slams to Europe.
“I think that would be amazing,” said Mouat when asked about the possibility of one of the five elite contests coming to Scotland.
“We’ve got a lot of teams doing really well at the minute. The boys and I are ranked number one in the world, Team Whyte [skip Ross Whyte] are now top five and we’ve also got Team Waddle [skip Kyle Waddle].
“That’s three teams in the top 16 in the men’s side and on the women’s side Team Morrison [skip Rebecca Morrison] are doing really well to be knocking on the door for the slams.
“If the slams did come to Scotland, we would run the event very well and get a lot of spectators in the door.”
Team Mouat made history in April by becoming the first rink to win four of the five slams in a single season, with Team Whyte picking up the other prize.
This time, all five events will be played before the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February.
Mouat, along with Hammy McMillan, Bobby Lamie and Grant Hardie, are preparing for this week’s Tour Challenge in Nisku, Alberta, having reached the semi-finals in London, Ontario, last month.
“Building momentum is important,” added Mouat, who has led Scotland to six world titles and five European gold medals.
“These are really good events to get time on the ice against the best opposition. At the slams we play on arena ice, similar conditions to the Olympics.”
‘Honest communication key to success’
Team Mouat have Olympic silver medals following a 5-4 final defeat to Sweden in 2022 and the burning ambition is to go one better in Italy next year.
“We’ve been together for nine seasons,” explained Mouat. “We knew in the first two months that we’d found something special.
“The main thing is our communication. We are very open and honest. We can have the tough conversations we need to have. No matter what we say, we know it’s always constructive.
“We are four very different individuals but we all have similar goals in curling and when you have four like-minded people it makes the team work better.
“The journey has been amazing but we’ve got one more goal and hopefully that’s going to happen for us in February. We’re putting a bit of pressure on ourselves to get that gold that we were so close to last time.”
