World Men's Curling Championship: Scotland take silver as winners Sweden make history
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Bruce Mouat and his rink secured a top-six place to ensure a place for Great Britain at Beijing 2022
Scotland had to make do with silver as Sweden claimed a third consecutive World Men's Curling Championship after a 10-5 win in Sunday's final.
Sweden skip Niklas Edin became the first man in history to lead a side to five titles, while only Canada had previously won three in a row.
For Scotland skip Bruce Mouat, it was an improvement on his bronze in 2018.
The sides were tied at 5-5 until Mouat came up short and Edin's double take out scored five in the ninth end.
The 26-year-old Scot said: "There was a lot of pressure this week for multiple reasons. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to try and get this far and we played so well to get here and I'm sure it'll feel good in a couple of days that we've beaten our own record of a bronze medal.
"I actually feel like we played better than the Swedes for a while and probably feel like we should have had a lead going into the latter half.
"However, they're so experienced and they made a ton of shots and put us under a lot of pressure, especially in that ninth end and unfortunately we just didn't make all our shots to make the force we were looking for and they got that big five, which was curtains for the game."
Edin, whose side topped the round-robin with 11 wins and two losses as Scotland took fifth spot, described it as "probably the toughest field ever at a World Championship".
"We were in really good form after winning the Worlds two years ago and we were super pumped up and eager to play in the Worlds last year when that got shut down," he said. "We didn't really know if we were still that good, so I think winning this one feels unreal.
"When I made it, it was just pure happiness. I'm really happy this one worked out."
While Sweden had qualified directly for the semi-finals, Scotland - Mouat, third Grant Hardie, second Bobby Lammie and lead Hammy McMillan - had to beat hosts Canada 5-3 in a qualifier before winning by the same margin in their semi-final against Sergey Glukhov's Russian rink, who had tied top of the round-robin with Sweden.
Benoit Schwarz's Swiss side, who lost 11-3 to the Swedes in their semi-final after beating United States in their play-off, took the bronze medal by defeating Glukhov's rink 6-5 in the third and fourth play-off.
The tournament had been paused on Friday after three positive asymptomatic tests involving rinks not participating in the play-offs.
The top six sides ensured their countries, in Scotland's case being Great Britain, will be represented at the 2022 Winter Olympics.