Just two months after winning her first Olympic gold medal, Eve Muirhead will look to claim the only major title that still eludes her when she and Bobby Lammie represent Scotland at the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship in Switzerland next month (23-30 April).
The Team GB colleagues claimed their first Scottish Mixed Doubles title in Perth earlier month and have now been selected to make the trip to Geneva and four-time Olympian Muirhead believes they will travel with extra confidence after their respective achievements in Beijing, where Lammie was part of Team Mouat who won a silver medal. 
“Having Olympic medals will definitely help us as we go into another major event this season,” she said.
“I think as curlers that’s why you play, to be involved in the big events and for Bobby and me this is the first opportunity to play at the World Mixed Doubles and we’re both really looking forward to playing.”
Muirhead could become the first British player to claim a full set of major titles in the same season, having also won the European Championships with her women’s team.
“We’re delighted to have the chance to play with Scotland on our backs again,” she said.
“It would mean the world to claim another medal. It’s something that hasn’t been done before and it’s another chance for us to get another medal and complete a triple.”
While the venue makes this a doubly new challenge, she is also relishing the prospect of a shorter trip, before she and regular teammates Vicky Wright, Jen Dodds, Hailey Duff and Mili Smith head to Canada for a Grand Slam event at The Players Championship. 
“Geneva’s somewhere that I’ve never curled in before and it’s nice that it will just be a little hop on a flight and not travelling across to the other side of the world, so we’ll look to have some good preparation leading into it and we’ve then got The Players Championships, so you can’t get much better preparation than playing against some of the best players in the world,” she observed.
Lammie, who is widely considered to be one of the best sweepers in the global game, is also looking forward to the different challenge.
“It means a lot for myself and Eve to be going to our first World Mixed Doubles together,” he said.
“It’s a new format for us, so to be able to test ourselves at the top level in this discipline is quite exciting. It will be a nice change for us to get away from our teams for just a couple of weeks and test ourselves in something new, so we’re definitely looking forward to that.
“I’ve never been to Geneva before, but we’ve obviously competed in Switzerland a lot, so we know what it’s like and the ice is usually always great.” 
While he and his men’s team skip Bruce Mouat have worked closely together down the years, he has not sought too much advice from the man who has been to five World Mixed Doubles Championships, relying instead on his own and Muirhead’s experience.
“Bruce and I have spoken about it a wee bit, but it’s more just for Eve and me to get in there and start to feel it out for ourselves,” he said.
“We’ve both been to quite a lot of championships in the past, so it’s not going to be any different, apart from a couple of players short of what we’re used to, so I’m sure when we get there it’ll be very natural to us.
“We just need to build on what we’ve done over the last couple of years to get ourselves to this stage. Every competition we’ve played together we’ve always won or been very close to winning it, so I don’t see why this should be any different.”
He is also aware of the opportunity to present itself to help his playing partner complete her set of gold medals. 
“Eve’s won just about everything there is apart from this, so we’ll do our best and hopefully add this to our collections,” he said.
Scotland MD Team
Eve Muirhead
Bobby Lammie
#curling #WMDCC2022
Images: PPA/Graeme Hart
