How it unfolded
The United States started the round robin 2-4 and was on the brink of elimination before winning its last three matches to finish 5-4, then advanced as the third seed to the semi-final by winning a tiebreak on head-to-head record. After beating Canada in the semi-final, their final opponent was Niklas Edin's Sweden, already a three-time world champion at that point. Sweden led narrowly through seven ends in a tight match, and the game turned in the eighth. John Shuster's double takeout, landing precisely on a cluster of stones in the house, let the US sweep five points in one end to go up 10-5. Sweden scored only two more across the remaining two ends, and the match finished 10-7. Shuster had assembled a team of players, including himself, who had underperformed at the previous two Olympics and been passed over for the national team, and the group nicknamed itself "Team Reject."
Why it still matters
This was the first Olympic curling gold in US history, and a major upset from outside Canada and Europe. US club registrations and broadcast exposure grew noticeably afterward, and Shuster became a symbol of American curling. For Sweden, this loss carried a different meaning: Edin began a run of four straight world titles immediately after, before finally completing the set with Olympic gold in Beijing four years later.