GRAEME THOMPSON, a sports-performance guru from Edinburgh with a background in water polo and rugby league, has taken over responsibility for British Curling's elite athletes in the next Olympic cycle.
Thompson was named performance director for British and Scottish Curling by sportscotland, in partnership with British Curling, filling the role vacated by Dave Crosbee when he left for Australia after the Sochi Olympics.
David Murdoch (silver) and Eve Muirhead (bronze) ensured double success for the British programme in Russia and now the mantle passes to Thompson to ensure that the considerable investment curling enjoys is well spent between now and the PyeongChang Games in 2018.
The British programme, managed and rolled out almost entirely in Scotland, was backed by £5m between 2010 and 2014, a sum split evenly between sportscotland and UK Sport.
Thompson, who has been charged with "leading and driving forward the men's, women's and wheelchair programmes for the PyeongChang 2018 cycle", according to sportscotland, said: "I am delighted to be taking up the position of performance director of the Scottish and British Curling Performance Programme.
"The success achieved by the athletes in Sochi was tremendous. It has provided a very good basis for further developing our programme into the next Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in 2018, and beyond, as we seek to continually demonstrate being one of the foremost global curling nations."
Thompson started work late last month and one of his first tasks will be to establish how to fill the void left by Rhona Howie when the 2002 Olympic champion skip ended her 20-year involvement in elite curling last month.
Thompson has more than 20 years' experience as performance director to GB Water Polo and England Rugby League, as well as a three-year period at UK Sport as performance advisor.
As well as the able-bodied silver and bronze, Britain's wheelchair curlers also won bronze in Sochi and that made it the team's most successful Winter Olympics since 1924. UK Sport announced increased funding for all three programmes in June.
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