As the country’s Winter Olympic curling medallists return to Scotland, there are hopes the game can be brought to new faces both in Stirling and across Scotland.
The stone-wielding efforts of the Team GB curling teams brought the country’s only medals at the Games in Beijing, with both Eve Muirhead’s gold medal-winning rink and Bruce Mouat’s silver medallists training full-time at The PEAK in Stirling.
The success has led to calls for the sport to be given more visibility away from the four-year Winter Olympic cycle and inspire a fresh generation to pick up their brushes.
Marcus Wood, secretary of the Stirling Curling Group which helps manage the interests of curlers playing the game at The PEAK, admits it was a long few hours following the team’s progress into the wee hours.
He said: “The teams train at the National Curling Academy based at The PEAK so we see them all the time.
“I tried to watch as many games as possible and certainly when the teams got through to the semis, it’s great for curling in Scotland and particularly for Stirling that we have the two teams here and it’s just absolutely fantastic what they managed to do out there.
“The men’s team lead Hammy MacMillan is also Active Stirling curling development officer at The PEAK so he sits on our management commmittee and having someone on that with an Olympic silver medal is very exciting.”
Marcus has already witnessed a surge in interest from people looking to get involved in the game, but admits there is a challenge for the game in harnessing that interest into regulars to help lower the average age taking to the ice.
He continued: “Try Curling is hoping to take advantage of the Olympics and all of the rinks have made ice available for it – we tend to have ice available at the NCA all year round. The average age of club curlers is getting older every year and that’s a significant problem, so we are trying to attract younger players and with the greater success this time in Beijing, it has been better in terms of the interest.
“I’ve always said that it is a great sport – chess on ice – and anyone from aged eight and upwards can play and get involved, all the way up into your 90s.
“It’s also open to anyone and anybody can play with anybody, we’ve had youngsters playing against wheelchair and stick curlers, women’s teams against men and you can even learn from the elite curlers.
“We are quite poorly covered so it’s great that the Scottish Championships this week are on BBC and the more we can get that kind of publicity on TV, the more we can get people
involved.
“The key questions for the sport are keeping facilities to enable people to play and getting more members playing regularly and retaining them when they come into the sport, especially younger members, but hopefully the Olympic success will help us to do that.”
