There’s only place for me to start this week and that’s finding the words to pay tribute to Vicky Wright, who has announced her retirement from elite level curling.
It’s not come as a surprise because I knew that Vicky felt this was the perfect time to go back to her nursing career full-time after our Olympic gold.
Everybody who follows curling knows what she has achieved in this last season.
Maybe Vicky has been too modest and didn’t always appreciate just how good she was but she shouldn’t have any doubts now.
🤣🤣🤣 accurate 😁 looking forward to the next chapter of adventures 🤩💙 https://t.co/Cucd7852xj
— Vicky Wright (@VickyWright14) May 17, 2022
I was listening to a podcast the other day with Kevin Martin, who is a legend in our sport.
Kevin described Vicky as the ‘player of the tournament’ at the Olympics.
That is quite a compliment coming from him – and he’s right.
It was only relatively recently that Vicky moved from lead to third and, as a skip, it made my life so much easier to have her producing the sort of form she did in Beijing.
If there’s one game that will define her career it will be the final.
She was phenomenal.
Up until I gave her a ‘shot to nothing’ that it didn’t really matter if she missed, Vicky was sitting at 100% for that gold medal match.
She was so calm and controlled the whole tournament.
Off the ice, she was such an important part of the group gelling and, as you might imagine for a nurse, she was a good organiser.
If we needed to find the first aid kit, Vicky was the one to go to!
I’ll miss her at the curling academy but she lives really close to me in Stirling so we’ll see plenty of each other.
And she won’t get away from curling completely…….I’ll be dragging her back to the Perth Super League!
I feel so sorry for Laura Robson that she’s been forced to retire at just 28.
That was the age I was going through hip surgery and contemplating whether I’d ever be able to curl again.
I certainly didn’t feel ready to call it a day because you think of that being a prime age for an athlete – even one as brutal on the body as tennis.
At least for me, when I was lying in the hospital bed not knowing what the future was going to hold, I had a big chunk of my career behind me.
I’d won European and World golds and Olympic bronze.
Laura was very much an athlete still on the way up.
Thank you for the memories @laurarobson5 🥰
Read more about Laura's career 👇
— LTA (@the_LTA) May 16, 2022
She will need a good support network around her because as much as this has been expected given all the injuries she’s had to deal with, it will still be a real mental battle to draw a line in the sand and not look back with regrets.
The fact that things started to go wrong with her body when she was the same age as Emma Raducanu is now goes to show that you really do have to enjoy being at the top of your sport while you can.
That’s easier said than done but Laura’s retirement is a good reminder.
The Commonwealth Games are creeping up on us!
I was so chuffed for a good friend of mine, Katie Robertson, being named vice-captain of the Scotland women’s squad this week.
Katie has always been really supportive of my career and hopefully I’ll get the chance to see her play in Birmingham later this summer.
Scotland are a hockey team on the up with big goals and having Katie as a leader in the group will certainly help their chances of fulfilling them.
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