British Curling’s Executive Performance Director Nigel Holl has hailed the latest successes enjoyed by the programme’s teams as evidence of the growing success of a system that is being built to respond to the demands of the modern game. 
The gold medal won in Ostersund by Team Mouat at the end of a high-class final against Switzerland, combined with Team Morrison finishing on a high by winning their bronze medal game against Italy on their debut at the event, represented another wonderful week’s work following up on what was achieved a year earlier when, for the first time, Scotland’s men and women both won their respective titles in the same season.
The consistency of the performances that have also brought Olympic gold in the women’s game, seen Team Mouat contest last year’s World Championship and this year’s Olympic finals and brought two World Mixed Doubles gold medals, has been down to the work being done in the world-leading National Curling Academy and Holl reckoned this latest achievement could not have demonstrated that better.
“This event had looked like being particularly challenging for our teams,” he explained.
“After the disappointment of being unable to compete at the World Championships earlier this year when COVID hit the camp, our women were playing at a major championships together for the first time, while Team Mouat had a very difficult start to the season when Bobby Lammie, the best sweeper in the game and a current World Mixed Doubles champion, suffered a broken hand.
“Our coaches and support team have consequently had to work harder than ever to prepare both teams for this event, but the way we are able to do that with the facilities we have in Stirling allowed them to and these medals are a huge reward for everyone.”
The opening of the National Curling Academy (NCA) in 2017 brought immediate success as the newly formed Team Mouat, who had come together because they could see the opportunity being presented to prepare as full-time athletes, ended a more than 20 year wait to see a Scottish men’s team enjoy success on the most lucrative curling circuit in the sport, Canada’s Grand Slam tour, by winning The National.
They only failed to defend their title successfully a year later when they were beaten in the final by compatriots Team Paterson. 
That same 2018/19 season saw Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan, end the hegemony in the European Championships enjoyed by Niklas Edin’s Swedish team over the entirety of the previous four-year Olympic cycle.
Edin would go on to win it again in the absence of the reigning champions in 2020, but on their return Team Mouat went through the entire event unbeaten last year and then enjoyed that successful defence to complete a hat-trick of wins in three appearances at the event, doing so in spectacular style with a brace of stunning shots by their skip on Saturday.
In between times Team Mouat have claimed medals at two of the three World Championships they have contested and, at least as tellingly, have become the most successful non-Canadian team in Grand Slam history, winning four more titles over the past two years.
Strength in depth has also been generated with Team Paterson, after winning a bronze medal at the 2020 European Championships, morphing into current Scottish champions Team Waddell, while Team Whyte have spent most of this season ranked in the world’s top 10, having won titles on either side of the Atlantic and Team Craik are beginning to make their mark on the senior circuit after last season’s World Junior Championships win.
Meanwhile, in the women’s game, there were significant challenges as Eve Muirhead, Scotland’s leading player of the previous decade, sought to recovery from hip surgery and changes to her team, leading to the innovative introduction of a nine-player squad system little more than a year ago which generated internal competition for places and led to those victories at the European Championships and the Winter Olympics last season.
In the new Olympic discipline of mixed doubles there was also innovation as the programme tried different ways of preparing teams, initially looking to create specialists before bringing in regular domestic competition in the NCA that allowed the country’s best players to compete for places.
That has resulted in back-to-back victories for Scotland teams at the 2021 and 2022 World Championships with Eve Muirhead and Bobby Lammie successfully defending the title won by their regular teammates Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat the previous year.
“We have enjoyed exceptional success thanks to the culture, the environment and the ethos we have built since the opening of the NCA and we know that the rest of the world is looking at what we are doing and trying to work out how to emulate it,” said Holl.
“That is all about the quality of the team we have assembled here and they are what makes it special, giving us a real edge, but the vision shown by sportscotland and Stirling Council in providing the funding to create that facility made it easier to bring them together to create a centralised system that responds to the demands of an increasingly professional and global sport.
“Of course, by doing things differently, by challenging the traditional approaches, we recognise that some find that difficult and against their views. What is clear to me however is that to get to the top of the world, let alone stay there, we need to keep fresh ideas, innovative thinking coming and look at everything we do through eyes that look forward not back to historic success.
“I believe we do that and we will continue to do it win lose or draw, but as the only British Olympic and Paralympic programme based north of the border, we are delighted that we are the organisation that is bringing this success to Scotland across the four year cycle as we build towards the next Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Milan-Cortina in 2026.
“While the medal successes achieved in Ostersund show that we are continuing to get things right, we know we must continue to strive to look for new ways of improving, because there were very fine margins at play at the Europeans. 
"The quality of the event throughout was proof of how quickly the sport is growing, with more European than Canadian teams currently in the world's top 20, while teams from across Asia are also now a factor in every global competition.
“We are consequently doing everything we can to find ways of increasing our talent pool and ensure that our players are getting every opportunity at every level to be the best they can possibly be, knowing that they are getting the chance to work in what is currently the best environment in the world game.”
Images: WCF Celine Stucki, GSOC Mike Cleasby, @Photovagrant, Team GB - David Pearce, Roland Beck, PPA-Graeme Hart.
