Eve Muirhead won’t be daunted by heading into next year’s Winter Olympics as one of Great Britain’s main medal hopes.
The Perthshire curler, who became world champion on Sunday along with team-mates Claire Hamilton, Anna Sloan and Vicki Adams, will now be one of the favourites, if not the favourites, for another gold in Russia.
After being welcomed home from Latvia to Edinburgh Airport by a large crowd of well-wishers, the 22-year-old told Courier Sport that the prospect of being a Team GB face of the Games doesn’t faze her.
Muirhead, whose hundreds of congratulatory texts, tweets and Facebook messages include one from First Minister Alex Salmond, said: “I said after winning the Scottish Championship a few weeks ago that we were probably 99.9% certain to be going to Sochi, and I suppose it’s now 99.99!
“I’m well aware that there will be more expectation on us now that we’ll be going there as World Champions, but that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. I’d certainly rather be the World Champions than not.”
She added: “There would be pressure on us at an Olympics whatever happened last week.”
If there’s one word that best sums up Muirhead’s post-Riga emotions, it’s “relief”.
She said: “I know how much work I’ve put in and how many early starts there have been. Things like that. And our funding was cut this year so we wanted to get that increased.
“So it’s a massive relief to know that we’ll have better funding going into the Olympics, meaning we can all be full-time hopefully.
“It’s also confirmation in our own minds that we can win against the best of the world when the top teams are all playing well. That’s something we’ll carry forward.
“Now that we’ve done it once we know we can do it again.”