Courier columnist Eve Muirhead, who skipped her curling rink to gold in the world championships in March with a last-stone victory over Sweden, has been named a member of Team GB for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Muirhead, along with Claire Hamilton, Anna Sloan and Vicki Adams, were selected by the British Olympic Association and are the first of an expected 50-strong Team GB to book their tickets for next February’s games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in Russia.
Despite being a shoo-in for the team, she said selection came as “a massive relief”.
And on the back of the announcement in Glasgow she issued a rallying call for a higher profile for curling in Scotland.
“It’s fantastic. An Olympic Games is huge. It’s something people dream of getting to,” she said. “As a team we had one of the best seasons ever and we were 90% sure that we were going to be selected. So it was always in our minds and on our radar, but we were never 100% sure. So we’re delighted to be named in Team GB today and I guess the harder work starts now.”
Muirhead was just 19 when she made her Olympic debut at the Vancouver 2010 games. Despite high hopes, her rink failed to progress beyond the round-robin stage and finished seventh.
“It is the total opposite now,” she said. “I was the young one in the team in Vancouver, and I guess I’m now the captain who’s leading the team, which makes it extra special. And I’m super, super happy for the other three girls because they haven’t been to the Olympics before.”
Across 17 days of competition, more than 6,000 athletes and teams members from 85 countries will be in action at both the coastal and mountain clusters during February’s games.
A record 98 medals will be contested across the seven winter sports of biathlon, bobsleigh, curling, skating, skiing, luge and ice hockey.