Eve needs more than a fag and a coffee!

In the Muirhead household, Olympic curling used to be all about Eve. Now it’s a family affair.

Eve has been the glamorous face of the sport since she first skipped the Great Britain team at the 2010 Games in Vancouver, aged just 21.

She came away from Canada empty-handed, but was back four years later in Sochi to claim a bronze medal.

She starts her programme in Pyeongchang on Wednesday as one of Team GB’S strongest medal hopes – but the difference this time is that her two brothers are in South Korea with her.

Older brother Glen, 28, and younger sibling Thomas, 22, will be playing for the men’s team.

Not that that means they’ve been banging on Eve’s door, asking her what it’s like to go to an Olympics!

“Being their sister, they don’t actually ask me for a lot of advice,” she laughs.

“When I was winning bronze at Sochi, Thomas was in a lecture at university, looking at his mobile phone at the back of the class, while Glen was at the market selling sheep!

“If they were to ask my advice, it would be to enjoy the moment. It’s phenomenal and it might only happen once in a lifetime.

“I have the family bragging rights right now, so hopefully they do look up to me a bit. But they’ve also earned their place at these Olympics and they need to focus solely on their competition.”

The “selling sheep” reference stems from the fact that Glen and Thomas run a farm in Crieff, and have to juggle their sport with their day job.

The three Muirheads got into curling through their father, Gordon, a 1999 world champion.

“We were never pushed into it,” says Eve. “We all made our own decision. The boys have always had a job on the side and they’re happy to have that distraction.

“For me, it’s hard to switch off from curling because it’s my life.

“I’m a full-time athlete and the first thing on my mind in the mornings is food, then the gym, then on to the ice.

“My dad always says how the sport has changed from when he was a high-level curler.

“His training regime was literally nothing. Dad’s warm-up was a fag and cup of coffee!

“Training every day is pretty brutal.

“OK, maybe not as much as tennis players do, but it’s very hard work.

“Vancouver was an eye-opener for me. I probably didn’t practise or train hard enough back then.

“I realised that if I wanted to get to the top of podium, I had to make my sport my No. 1 priority.

“Training puts your social life on the back seat, but I’ll do anything to get that gold medal.”

Eve follows the footsteps of Rhona Martin, whose ‘Stone of Destiny’ won gold at the 2002 Games.

“I know Rhona very well. We chat an awful lot and what she did was fantastic for the sport,” Eve says. “That’s what put curling on the map and started to grow it.” Great Britain’s snowboarders suffered further bad luck as Jamie Nicholls, Billy Morgan and Rowan Coultas all failed to qualify for the final of the men’s snowboard slopestyle.

With only the top six from each heat moving through to today’s final, Nicholls and Morgan finished eighth and 10th respectively while Coultas fell on both of his runs in his first Olympics.

Nicholls said: “I felt so confident — the right mindset, feeling really good about my snowboarding, better that I have throughout my whole career. You only get two runs and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”

Nicholls felt he did not receive just reward for his run after he missed out on advancing by two points.

“I was actually a bit gutted about my score,” he added.

“Mid-70s was what I was hoping for with that kind of run, judging on what some of the other guys did and tricks on the jumps. I thought my top section was really strong but obviously it wasn’t to be.”