The European Curling Championships start next weekend at the city’s Linx Centre. It is a prestigious event in its own right, but inevitably the forthcoming Winter Olympics in the British Columbia city next February will cast a huge shadow over proceedings.
For sure the men’s rink, skipped by Lockerbie’s David Murdoch, and the women’s, headed by teenage prodigy Eve Muirhead from Blair Atholl, will be doing their utmost to succeed on home ice. The crown of European champions is much sought after, but the end game since the Turin Games in 2006 has always been the next Olympics and the lure of gold.
In Aberdeen they will be representing Scotland. In Vancouver, the personnel will remain the same, but the Saltire will be replaced by the Union flag. The pride, passion and professionalism – they are all full-time curlers – will be unchanged.
Murdoch’s rink, which also includes Ewan MacDonald, Pete Smith and Euan Byers, have little to prove in Aberdeen. They are the Scottish, European and World champions. In the latter event in March they defeated the hitherto all-conquering Canadian team three times before 6000 of their own partisan fans, a performance that sent a shiver through the world’s foremost nation of icemen.
Everything is now geared towards emulating what Rhona Martin’s rink achieved at Salt Lake City in 2002 when they won Great Britain’s first Winter Olympic gold medals since 1984 when Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean achieved perfection in ice dance to Bolero.
Things have moved on in the last seven years, not least in selection. Then, a rink was chosen in its entirety. Now, selectors pick individuals and put the “dream teams” together backed up by analysts, fitness instructors, nutritionists, tacticians and psychologists. No stone has been left unturned.
Muirhead was only 12 when she was allowed to stay up late to watch Martin. She had taken up curling just over two years earlier, encouraged by her family, her father Gordon having two world silver medals behind him.
Little did this young girl suspect that it would be she who would lead the post-Martin era, having undergone coaching from the great curler herself on the road to skipping three World Junior Championship teams, the last one on the very ice in Vancouver that will stage the Olympics, and earning a reputation as the kid with the appetite for the big occasion.
A natural sportswoman – she is a two-handicap golfer and a county regular for Perth and Kinross – she will be backed up by the experienced Jackie Lockhart who is heading for her fourth Olympics and coming from Stonehaven will be playing next weekend as the local heroine, Kelly Wood and Lorna Vevers.
For the women, a European success would be a big step in the right direction. For the men it is a case of keeping the hammer on the opposition.
“No-one wants to play us for fun,” said coach David Hay, who would love nothing better than to see that the rink he regards as Scotland’s best ever complete what might be described as curling’s clean sweep.
o All four qualifying sections in the Edinburgh International Championships at Murrayfield are led by undefeated Scottish teams. David Murdoch from Lockerbie beat Perth’s Gordon Muirhead 5-4 in his fourth game in Group A, while Perth’s Warwick Smith tops Group B, after a 7-4 win over France’s Thomas Dufour. In Group C, Aberdeen’s Tom Brewster beat last year’s winner Andi Kapp from Germany 7-2, while Perth’s Peter Loudon had a 6-3 win over Ainirs Gulbis from Latvia.
The top two teams from each section will proceed to today’s quarter-finals.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article