Perthshire’s Olympic champion Eve Muirhead retires from curling

By Eric Nicolson

August 11 2022, 11:00am

Eve Muirhead is waving goodbye to competitive curling.

Eve Muirhead has announced her retirement from curling.

The Perthshire Olympic champion has decided to bow out at the top, having finally claimed the elusive gold medal in China earlier this year at the fourth time of asking.

Beijing glory was the pinnacle of a career that saw the 32-year-old from Blair Atholl become Scotland’s most decorated ever curler – and one of the most successful athletes the nation has produced in any sport.

She won four World Junior titles, one ladies’ World gold, three Europeans and a World Mixed crown alongside Bobby Lammie.

Eve, a Courier columnist for over a decade who had offers of golf scholarships in America as a teenager, has been awarded an MBE and OBE for services to her sport.

It has not been all plain sailing.

She underwent hip surgery in 2018 and had to contemplate the possibility of her career being cut short.

End of an era

It is an end of an era for Scottish Curling.

Team Muirhead – in many different guises but, apart from that injury lay-off, always with Eve as skip – has consistently been Scotland’s strongest since they came together after the 2010 Winter Olympics.

We did it! Olympic Champions. So so proud of this team! pic.twitter.com/zJn4CXiIyX

— Eve Muirhead OBE (@evemuirhead) February 20, 2022

Eve’s retirement is the third of the five curlers who returned with gold from China, with Vicky Wright and Mili Smith previously announcing their decisions to step away from the elite programme.

She said: “A four-year cycle is a long time and I’d be back at the bottom of the mountain.

“I’m not sure I’d have the motivation to start climbing it again.

“It’s the right time for me to step away and the right time for others to do things their way.

“There won’t be any regrets.”