History making curling partners Jen Dodds and Bruce Mouat will make their first competitive appearance since winning their World Championship title and their last of a momentous 2021 when they compete in the Gothenburg Mixed Doubles Cup (Dec 28-30) this week.
After becoming part of the first Scottish pairing to win the World Mixed Doubles Championship, they subsequently went on to be part of the teams that became the first Scots ever to win both the men’s and women’s European Curling Championships in November.
That set up Dodds and her teammates Eve Muirhead, Vicky Wright, Hailey Duff and Mili Smith for the even greater challenge of being the first women’s team to try to qualify Team GB through an Olympic Qualification Event (OQE), which they did in style earlier this month by topping the table.
In between times both players enjoyed further success in an array of varied challenges.
Dodds was part of an innovative and challenging nine-player women’s squad system through which the team for those European Championships and OQE were selected, playing in a succession of competitions with different teams before that line-up was settled.
Mouat and regular teammates Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan, secure in having qualified for the Olympics by reaching the final of last season‘s Men’s World Championships, were meanwhile enhancing their global reputation by becoming the first non-Canadian team to win three successive titles on the prestigious Grand Slam circuit, going on to reach a fourth final in a row in those events, before lifting their European title.
All of that consequently explains why they have had no opportunity to compete internationally at mixed doubles since their World Championship win at Aberdeen in May and are keen to get some vital match practice. 
“The Worlds feels like a lifetime ago, so it’ll be nice to be on the ice with Jen at a competition again,” said Mouat.
“We’ve obviously not had a lot of mixed doubles competitions this season because we’ve had other focuses, but we’re really looking forward to getting going again, especially with the Olympics just around the corner, so we’re really excited to get back on the ice together and see if we can re-create the magic we had in Aberdeen.”
With the teams set to head to Beijing in January the imminent nature of the Winter Olympics was brought into focus for them as they left home bound for this event as Mouat observed in noting that: “It’s definitely getting real, because I just said goodbye to my dad for the last time before March.”
The success of the women’s team at the OQE has meant that Dodds is joining her lifelong friend in becoming one of the first players ever to represent Team GB in two curling events at the same Olympics.
“I’m really excited to play in both,” she said.
“It was almost like a relief once we qualified the girls and when we got the call saying we were going I was really honoured to know I’d be going with my two great teams with Bruce and with the girls.”
The pair have put in considerable technical and tactical work on mixed doubles since winning the World Championships, but the timing of this week’s event makes it a key opportunity to measure themselves ahead of Beijing. 
“We haven’t even had any competitions back home in the NCA recently because of other competitions, including qualifying the women for the Olympics, but this should be a really good event,” said Dodds.
“Some high quality teams are going to be there, so it will be a good test for us to see where we are before we go into the Olympics.”
