Having built a trophy haul that includes multiple European titles, a World Championship win and an Olympic medal, Eve Muirhead may have seen more than most in sport, but the Scotland and GB skip is still revelling in new experiences as she targets a trip to Beijing for a fourth Winter Olympics next year.
The 31-year-old who was awarded an MBE last year for her services to curling in more than a decade competing at the highest level, received another major accolade this week, this time from her sporting peers when she was voted onto the British Olympic Association’s Athletes Commission.
Coming within 10 days of an achievement that surprised even Muirhead herself when her team beat both the current Olympic and World champions as she claimed her third European Championship title win, those confidence boosters have come at a perfect time as she prepares for new challenges that are among the biggest of her career. 
“It means a lot to me to be appointed onto the British Olympic Association Athletes Commission,” she said.
“I have obviously been involved in the sport of curling and with Team GB for several years, so it’s nice to get the chance to be part of the athletes’ voice and to be able to sit with them and discuss everything going forward. It’s another challenge that I’ve got in my career and I’m looking forward to it.
“The biggest challenge facing our team right now, though, is the Olympic Qualifying Event (OQE). I’ve played in many events but this is a new one.”
Along with vice skip Vicky Wright, reigning World Mixed Doubles champion Jen Dodds, lead Hailey Duff and alternate Mili Smith, she is heading to the Netherlands this weekend to contest the OQE, the first time a British men’s or women’s team has had to do so.
“It’s a first time for me playing in Holland, so that’s going to be a new experience, too, while it’s also clearly going to be a very high calibre, important event that is do-or-die before the Olympics,” Muirhead acknowledged.
“However, we’re on the back of a gold medal at the Europeans and we’ve prepared very well for it, so I don’t think we need to change our approach one bit.
“With it being a round-robin it’s exactly the same as every other major championship. That’s how we deal with it, taking each day and each game at a time. Our number one target is to qualify (through the round-robin) and number two is the play-off stages.”
They will face eight other national teams from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, and Turkey in the initial round-robin section. The team ranked first at the end of that stage will qualify directly to go to Beijing. The second and third placed teams will then play-off, with the winners also heading to the Winter Olympics and the third and final remaining place will be taken by the team which wins the last play-off match between the loser of the second/third place match and the team that finished fourth. 
The pressure will clearly be intense for all the competing teams, but Muirhead believes that the way she and her teammates out-performed the very best in the game at last month’s Euros provided the ideal preparation.
“That European gold has done us a lot of good,” she said.
“Of course, with Hailey and Mili being at their first event at that level it can only do great things by adding a lot of confidence going into this week.
“We’ve got to enjoy all of that, especially the challenge. We need to forget what comes out of this event.
“There’s a lot of tricky teams there, but I’m looking forward to this. We’re going to go there and once again be representing our country, so we want to do everyone proud, the same as we did at the Europeans and we’ll definitely give it our all.”
Scotland Team (Qualifying Team GB for Beijing 2022)
Eve Muirhead
Vicky Wright
Jen Dodds
Hailey Duff
Mili Smith
Schedule:
Saturday 11 December
0800 – Session 1
Scotland v Czech Republic
Sunday 12 December
1300 – Session 3
Scotland v Turkey
Monday 13 December
0800 - Session 4
Scotland v Korea
1800 – Session 5
Scotland v Japan
Tuesday 14 December
1300 – Session 6
Scotland v Germany
Wednesday 15 December
0800 – Session 7
Scotland v Estonia
1800 – Session 8
Scotland v Latvia
Thursday 16 December
1300 – Session 9
Scotland v Italy
Friday 17 December
0900 Play-off Session 1
Saturday 18 December
0900 Play-off Session 2
#curling #OQE2021 #Roadto2022
Images: WCF/Celine Stucki
