Eve Muirhead insists she is undaunted by the challenge of swapping her curling broom for a stack of spreadsheets as she prepares to spearhead Great Britain’s Winter Olympic bid in Milan and Cortina in exactly one year’s time.
The 34-year-old Muirhead has no regrets about deciding to bring an end to her glittering career in the wake of her gold medal win in Beijing in 2022, leading to her appointment as Team GB chef de mission at the Games for the first time.
Few British athletes have experienced a greater range of Olympic emotions than Muirhead, whose four cycles involved a broom-breakingly bad debut in Vancouver in 2006, a frustrating bronze in Sochi four years later and a near-miss in Pyeongchang before it all came good in China’s Covid-stricken capital.
“I’ve experienced every possible aspect of an Olympic Games, from the highs to the lows, and I want to listen to the athletes and to share my own experiences to help and support them as much as I can,” said Muirhead.
“It’s been a challenge for me and I love challenging myself. I still set myself certain goals to achieve and it’s something that drives me every single day, to be better, to learn, to listen and to make sure we get everything right.
“I guess now, being in charge of the delegation, you feel that you’re part of those athletes’ dreams and you have a say in how you’re going to manage them and hopefully help them make those dreams come true.
“I know how satisfying it is to go out there with the Team GB logo on and you want to see those athletes with a smile on their faces, coming away from the Games knowing they’ve done as well as they can and having memories that will last a lifetime.”
Muirhead expects to lead a team of approximately 50 athletes to Milan and Cortina, one which looks well equipped to erase the disappointment of Beijing, in which Muirhead and her fellow curling captain Bruce Mouat achieved Team GB’s only two podium places.
Mia Brookes, Charlotte Bankes and Zoe Atkin boast World Cup wins in snowboard and freestyle already this year, Britain’s bobsleigh and skeleton squads have landed a slew of gold medals and Mouat could well head into his second Games ranked number one in the world.
“Winter sports are very unpredictable,” added Muirhead, who made her chef de mission debut at the Winter Youth Olympics in Gangwon last year.
“There are such small margins between winning and losing on the winter stage. Beijing was a slightly different Games in that a lot of sports didn’t have the perfect preparation because of the Covid environment. But we don’t put numbers on it, I think it would be unfair to put that pressure on the athletes.”
Logistically, the Milan and Cortina Games present a unique challenge to Muirhead given the daunting travelling time between the Games’ three major hubs in Milan, which will host the skating disciplines, Livigno, where the freestyle programme takes place, and Cortina, set to host curling and sliding.
That logistical issue could become a trans-Atlantic headache, with Lake Placid on standby to step in as host of the sliding events should Italian organisers fail in their race against time to rebuild the century-old track in Cortina – in the face of much local opposition – in time to stage the Games.
“I had a call with the organising committee a couple of weeks ago. They are doing monthly checks and all is up to speed and up to date,” said Muirhead.
“We’re very calm about it. We’re following the organising committee’s advice and right now we’re all focused on the sliding still being in Cortina. If that does change, then we go with it and it’s all hands on deck to make it work.”
