It’s a Thursday night in November. A pub in Glasgow’s Merchant City. Four men, all about the age of 30, are squeezed around a small table, eating and talking about what the next few months might bring. Nobody recognises them.
That same pub three months later. Screens showing a Celtic game are changed so the patrons can watch the curling. Almost everyone is anxiously staring at the TVs, willing those same four men to reach a Winter Olympic final.
Chances are they will be doing the same on Saturday (18:05 GMT), when Team GB’s Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Hammy McMillan and Bobby Lammie take on Canada with a gold medal at stake.
“Our gold medal,” as Mouat referred to it after the epic semi-final win over Switzerland in northern Italy on Thursday – a contest which drew 3.4million viewers to the BBC at its peak.
And fulfilling what they believe to be their destiny – by upgrading their silver medal from Beijing four years ago – is what these four Scots have travelled to Cortina to do.
Since that 2022 near miss, Team Mouat have come to dominate men’s curling, winning two World Championships and adding another couple of European crowns, as well as a record 12 Grand Slam titles.
At times, they have been unbeatable.
That cloak of invincibility slipped during the round-robin stages here – leaving qualification out of their hands – but that fright has now been forgotten, replaced with the return of a clear-eyed focus on the task in hand.
But who are these four young men who have now caught the country’s attention? And what makes them more than the sum of their parts?