Great Britain Demolished The U.S. With An Olympic Curling Record

You only get eight stones in each end of curling. So how often does a team score seven points in an end, as Great Britain did against the U.S. in Sochi? It's rare at the lowest levels of competition, and until today, when it went down in the fourth end of a 12-3 Team GB win, had never happened at the Olympics. Good job, good effort, Team USA.

A team receives a point for each stone it has closer to the center than its opponent's closest stone. So to score this seven, everything had to go wrong. Above are the final two stones of the fourth end. Team USA's stone was intended to curl around GB's guard and limit the damage. But it clipped the guard instead, and left itself wide open for Great Britain to knock it out with their final stone. Listen to the BBC's announcers—they're almost bashful over how total the domination was. "Embarrassment there for the U.S."

Aside from the record seven-ender, Team GB's 12 points in the match tied an Olympic record—and that's even with the U.S. conceding with four ends left to play.