Scotland’s leading players have been utilising it since the beginning of the month, but the ceremonials were undergone yesterday as the new national curling academy was officially opened in Stirling yesterday.

It was a project that, having been promised by politicians following the medal successes of the sport’s Olympians and Paralympians in Sochi, looked to have stalled 18 months ago. That led to Dave Murdoch, skip of the men’s team that reached their Olympic final, calling on the Scottish Government and sportscotland to make good on their word. Work finally began on the £3.15 million project last season.

While Murdoch has since called time on his own playing career his fellow Olympic medal winning skip Eve Muirhead outlined how welcome the development has been.

“We got access to it on the first of August and what a difference that’s made. It’s fantastic turning up to training knowing you have that facility on your doorstep to us in the last month and I know it will right up to the Olympics and for the future of curling,” she said.

“I can’t see anyone beating this. I know they are putting in a lot of video and TV systems so you can really analyse your delivery down to the smallest margins.,” she said, noting that it was a huge benefit to no longer be sharing the ice with other sports that have very different requirements.

“If anyone has a facility better than that I don’t know what they have that makes it better because I’m really, really impressed with it and it’s made our live and the coaches lives very easy.”