Eve Muirhead’s Olympic build-up has had a huge boost, after the Perthshire curler and her team claimed a major title in Canada.
Muirhead, Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Claire Hamilton defeated the Chinese Bingyu Wang rink 8-3 in the Autumn Gold Curling Classic final, after knocking out the favourites to make the Canadian team for Sochi skipped by Rachel Homan in the semi-final.
It’s the Courier-sponsored team’s first win of the 2013/14 season, and has sent out a message to all their potential Olympic medal rivals that the World Champions are in excellent shape with just four months to go to the Winter Games.
Muirhead said: “We’ve always still got things to work on. Every week is a building block leading to Sochi.
“You obviously want to peak in February, but you can’t judge when you want to peak. In curling, it’s not a case of peaking and then not peaking. It’s just about being consistent the whole way through to the Olympics, and that’s what we want to do.
“We had a fantastic week. We came out fighting in the final and the girls played great.
“Our season maybe started off not bad, not slow, just kind of in the middle, average. Now we’re working our way up.”
The World Curling Tour event was Team Muirhead’s second in a row in Canada.
The week before in Vancouver they were knocked out by Wang’s team and Muirhead admitted it was nice to turn the tables.
“Revenge is always sweet, isn’t it?” the 23-year-old said.
“But I’ve played her so many times, and she’s had such a great year this year.”
Homan, Jennifer Jones and Cathy Auld were among the big name Canadian teams they defeated over the five day tournament. They will all have to compete for the right to represent their country in Sochi.
Muirhead and her team-mates, on the other hand, were the first to be named in Team GB. That has helped them in their preparations for Russia, and so too has the self-belief gained by becoming World Champions.
“We enjoy the pressure,” Muirhead said.
“We’ve had a lot of pressure these last few years being a new, young team and, for myself, having already been at the Olympics and changing teams and things like that.
“But you know what? We enjoy the pressure, and if the pressure wasn’t there, there would be something wrong.”