As they rejoined friends and family in Scotland last night, Britain's Olympic medal-winning curlers were already re-setting their sights on the future for themselves and their sport.
Basking in a warm reception at Edinburgh's airport hotel after a day which included a Downing Street visit, David Murdoch, who skipped the men to silver, and Eve Muirhead, who led their female counterparts to bronze, both indicated interest in carrying on to the next Olympics, albeit to different degrees.
Muirhead feigned nervousness when asked whether her team intended to stay together.
"I'm sure . . . well, I'd like to think we're not going to quit and we'll be trying to make our way up that Olympic podium," she said.
There was a quick a smile at team-mates Anna Sloane, Claire Hamilton and Vicki Adams, before the 23-year-old went back to her usual asserted self. "We're the youngest team to win an Olympic medal and we're not finished yet," she said. "So far in our careers we've had a lot of success and won major championships.
"This Olympic tournament was hopefully just a stepping stone to future success. We've put in a lot of work to get where we are."
After what has been something of a 12-year odyssey in pursuit of the piece of metal he is now clutching, Murdoch was slightly more equivocal but by no means ruled himself out of future Games.
"It's been three Olympic campaigns for myself now and getting that medal is incredible," he said. "We need to speak to a lot of people, our wives and partners, our families, to UK Sport, sportscotland and the Institute of Sport to find out what the future entails. We have the silver and it could be tempting to see if we could get the gold.
"I'll see what my wife says because I don't spend much time at home, but 35 isn't old in curling terms. We've seen a lot of guys in their forties become Olympic champions."
The difference was perhaps understandable given their age and the way the teams had been assembled. While Muirhead's world champions had been put together in traditional fashion, it had been a controversial decision - at least partly vindicated - to ask Murdoch to skip a rink previous skipped by Tom Brewster to two world championship finals. Like the rest of his former team - Greg Drummond, Michael Goodfellow and Scott Andrews - Brewster, and fellow alternate Lauren Gray, earned a medal for his reserve role.
Murdoch and Brewster apart, all of these medallists are in their 20s and with Shona Robison, the Scottish Government's sports minister, in attendance at last night's official welcome function, there is an awareness that this represents a huge opportunity for the sport.
That was eloquently expressed by Drummond, who observed: "Never in a million years did we expect this many people to be here. This is totally different from a world championship.
"It is our chance to showcase the sport and we'd like to think it will inspire a generation to try curling. This is when it has to happen."
While administrators have admitted that they bungled a similar opportunity following the last Winter Olympics, the players themselves have already turned their minds to how to capitalise on their success and develop the sport beyond the tight-knit community that generates most of the talent.
Something of a poster boy for that process, even before he was forced to take his shirt off during the final when he was picked up for wearing the wrong attire, Goodfellow is something of a rarity in having come from a family with no curling background and he suggested that the sport has to learn to think differently. "You look at a sport like darts and the way that they've sold that," he said. "Smaller sports can get bigger and the Olympics showed just how much you can get wrapped up in curling.
"We're in a better place now but we need to make it attractive so that people pick it up along with the bigger sports like football."
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