Holiday on ice as curlers bid to end year as world's No.1
After the briefest of
Christmas stop offs at home, curlers Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat have headed back on the road once again in a bid to finish the greatest year of their careers with a flourish in Sweden.
Their appearances in the semi and quarter-finals in two Grand Slam mixed doubles events having sandwiched Mouat’s appearance in the final of another with his men’s team in Canada earlier this month, the former world champions are making a return trip to the Gothenburg Mixed Doubles Cup in bidding to finish 2022 as the top ranked pairing in the world.
“It’s exciting to finish off the year with this event,” said Mouat who, as well as winning an Olympic silver medal in 2022, also became the first Scottish skip to win the Pinty’s Cup, awarded to the leading team in the Grand Slam of Curling series.
“We did the same last year and it was a good event.
“They are very welcoming and have put together a good standard of field and the ice is pretty good as I remember, so we’re looking forward to getting started.”
Having taken time out of women’s curling this season to concentrate on the mixed doubles discipline, Dodds expressed appreciation for the way her partner is juggling his commitments.
“Bruce has been extremely busy, so I thank him for that, but we love competing and this is why we train, it’s why we’re in the sport,” she said.
“We enjoy playing together, so we’re just going to try to play our best and we’ll see what happens.”
As testing as their schedule has been, the Olympic gold medallist consequently believes they are ready to perform at their best as they know they will have to among a field that contains several of the best teams in the world, reflecting Europe’s domination of the leading spots in the world rankings.
“We’ve had a week’s rest between our last competition and this one, so it’s just about getting back into the flow again and keeping going the way we’ve been going,” said Dodds.
“2022 was a really busy year and a pretty successful one for both of us.
“That was last season, though and we’re still really happy with that but we just have to concentrate on this one.”