LEADING LADIES
Skip Muirhead fears no one in Sochi as she bids to lead her curling world champions to glory on ice
THERE’S something about Eve Muirhead which, even at the age of 23, elevates her above her sport. She’s young and photogenic, but she also tends to deliver. The current world women’s champion, Muirhead skips the team which is aiming to win gold at the Winter Olympics in Sochi this month. She and fellow curlers Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Claire Hamilton fly out to Russia on Wednesday as part of a British team with a distinctively dark blue hue.
Threats of terrorism and protests about gay rights are of no concern to the pragmatic young woman who was born and brought up in Blair Atholl. Speaking at the team’s Stirling base before embarking on yet another weight session in the gym, Muirhead maintained: ‘None of that bothers me at all. I’ve got one job to do, and that’s on the ice.’
This single-minded determination is just one of the factors which marks Muirhead out from the masses. Her main rivals for the gold medal in Sochi are the Swedish skip Margaretha Sigfridsson and Canadian counterpart Jennifer Jones. They are 38 and 39 respectively, much nearer the age Rhona Martin — now Howie following her divorce — was when she delivered the Stone of Destiny at Salt Lake City in 2002.
Does this gap in experience bother Muirhead? Not a bit of it.
‘A couple of years ago, I was known as the young one, or the up-andcoming one,’ she pointed out. ‘I’m still one of the youngest on the curling tour, as are the rest of the girls, but we are now also one of the most experienced teams as well. We’ve come so far in the last few years.’
In addition to her World Championship success in Riga last March, Muirhead’s medal display includes silver in the same event in 2010, gold from the 2011 European Championships — like the Winter Olympics also held in Russia — and three European silvers. Prior to most of this, she was a four-time world junior champion.
At the outset of Muirhead’s career, the sport was dominated by the Canadians, but there has been a sea change. ‘There used to be a fear of the Canadians, for sure,’ she said. ‘If you look at the order of merit for the world curling tour three years ago, nine out of the top 10 were Canadian.
‘Now it’s two out of 10. It’s slightly different in men’s curling — that’s still dominated by the Canadians.’
Importantly, Muirhead has consistently got the better of the Canadian women’s skip Jones since the one-time lawyer gave birth to her first child in November 2012. A fortnight ago, she routed Jones 12-2 in the Continental Cup in Las Vegas, an event which drew 50,000 spectators over the three days.
Muirhead said: ‘We’ve got a good recent record against them but being the top Canadian team means they are s*** hot.’
The bookmakers agree, making the North Americans favourites for gold in Sochi. The Swedes are just behind them.
The Scots got the better of the Swedes at the World Championships last year, but Sigfridsson turned the tables at the Europeans in Stavanger.
That was a tough one to take for Muirhead because her team dominated all the way to the final.
It still rankles, and will provide a spur in Sochi.
The build-up has seen an avalanche of media attention on Muirhead — another indication of how she has the ability to transcend her sport.
Very few sportswomen get the attention they often merit in the media. Yet, going into Sochi, it’s all about Eve; the GB men’s team skipped by fellow Scot David Murdoch will fly into the Olympics well under the radar despite their No 2 world ranking being one higher than Muirhead’s.
As the current world champions, there’s certainly more pressure on Muirhead and her team-mates than there was in Vancouver four years ago. That wasn’t a happy occasion for the skip, playing with a different team, but, given that she was just 19 and still a junior, it was an invaluable experience.
‘I can’t even remember what was going through my head before Vancouver — it was like another tournament,’ Muirhead admitted. ‘This time, I’m really looking forward to the Games. It has come along pretty quickly.’
Tomorrow and Tuesday will be largely occupied by packing for the curler. She and her team-mates could have their lives changed by the events of the next three weeks — the women’s final is on February 20 — but regardless of the outcome there will still be something about Eve.