Twenty years after winning Olympic curling gold Rhona Howie has been given new hope of finally getting her stolen medal replaced.
Howie is back at the Games as a commentator, her presence in Beijing evoking memories of 2002 when she broke Swiss hearts with the very last stone of the final.
She was Rhona Martin back then and the ‘stone of destiny’, as it became known, brought Britain’s first winter gold since Torvill and Dean in 1984.
A UK television audience of more than six million stayed up to watch the drama unfold at the Ogden Ice Sheet in Salt Lake City.
At the end of a marathon 13-match campaign Martin displaced the Swiss stone from the centre of the ‘house’ and she and team mates Debbie Knox, Janice Rankin, Fiona MacDonald and Margaret Morton were presented with their medals.
“They were designed in the shape of river rocks found in Utah's streams and were said to be the heaviest Olympic medals ever created,” Howie recalled.
For 12 years she treasured hers, taking it around schools on show-and-tells to inspire the next generation of curlers.
Bruce Mouat, Jen Dodds and Eve Muirhead, each of whom has a strong medal chance in the coming weeks, were among those drawn into the sport as a result.
But all that ended in 2014 when the medal was stolen in a raid on an exhibition at a Dumfries museum.
Two men were caught and jailed but the medal was never found and Howie suspects it was melted down.
“To this day it really upsets me,” she said. “We got in touch with the IOC but the replacement they sent was a third of the size and weight, didn’t have a ribbon and didn’t look the same at all.
“Apparently the IOC museum in Lausanne has one medal from every Games as a template, so you’d think they could make another one the same. Apparently not.”
Eight years on nothing has changed but now, on this the 20th anniversary and following an approach from the DailyMirror/Express, the British Olympic Association has pledged to try again.
“The images of Rhona’s famous stone of destiny are one of the most enduring in Olympic history,” said BOA director of communications, Scott Field.
“We’re very happy to make a submission to the IOC to see if we can get Rhona a replacement medal given the terrible circumstances of it being stolen from her.”
Howie admits returning to the Games has her feeling nostalgic for “the most amazing time” in her life.
“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “I’m very competitive in everything I do. When I got that chance I wasn’t going to blow it.
“That said, had I known six million folk were watching back home I’d probably not have been able to release the stone!
“Luckily you’re so focused on what you’re doing, on the game and what’s happening in front of you, that you’re not thinking of the consequences. You just play the shot.”
