Nigel Holl hopes Winter Olympic Games success will launch a revolution in curling: "Facilities across the UK should wake up, seize the opportunity and my plea to facility operators, organisations like Sport England, Sport Scotland and Sport Wales, is to invest in curling facilities."
Monday 21 February 2022 14:55, UK
British Curling boss Nigel Holl has made a plea to governing bodies and ice rink owners across the UK to "seize the opportunity" and capitalise on the success of Team GB's curling teams at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The Games finished with back-to-back medals for Team GB in the men's and women's curling competitions, the only medals Team GB won during 16 days of action on ice and snow.
On Saturday, Bruce Mouat and his team of Olympic debutants won silver in the men's curling, with Eve Muirhead and her team then securing gold on the final day of the Games.
Muirhead and her team's gold was Great Britain's first curling gold medal since Rhona Martin's famous triumph in 2002.
Holl, the Team GB performance director for curling, insists action must be taken to ensure it is not another two decades before British curlers are on top of the podium again.
"We have got to do something differently from what we did back then," Holl implored. "We are hearing, and it is quite hard to tell from Beijing, that the country has totally switched on to curling and loving it.
"My plea to ice rink owners across the UK is buy some curling stones, put some curling sheets down, give people the opportunity to try the game.
"It is a sport for everybody from eight to 80, genuinely. It is an incredible social sport and superb at elite level as well.
Facilities across the UK should wake up, seize the opportunity and my plea to facility operators, organisations like Sport England, Sport Scotland and Sport Wales, is to invest in curling facilities.
"There are something like about 28 specialised rinks in Scotland and there are three operating at the moment for curling in England - Tunbridge Wells, Preston, Cambridge. We need to spread that.
"It is a sport for everybody, and we have proven it is a sport that GB can and will do very well at in the future."
Team GB would have suffered a Beijing medals wash-out but for the performances of their curlers.
Holl said: "The biggest difference is we have a dedicated centre, the national curling academy in Stirling and we have got some fantastic coaches and support staff across a range of disciplines.
"We have built a culture of excellence in the last couple of years and Covid has actually helped us. The players have bought into that change.
"It isn't just a building where there is ice. They are full-time athletes there from 8am until late afternoon. They have got incredible support around them, technology, data, video, performance analysis.
"We are creating a very special environment and that helps us for the future going forward. The younger players following behind the guys are getting the benefit of it now. Watch out for the future. This is only the start."
Dame Katherine Grainger is the Chair of UK Sport and told Sky Sports the feelings within the organisation are mixed after Team GB missed their target of three to seven medals.
"It's fair to say, there are a range of emotions and I've been there myself," Grainger said. "The athletes themselves feel it more than any of us; they'll have had their own expectations going into these Games and some will be coming away disappointed with where they finished.
"So, where we go to now are massive reviews for every sport, not just looking back on the Games themselves but the four years leading up to them. It will be looking at what worked, what didn't and what could be better next time."
Grainger said that each of the sports will individually perform a review process before UK Sport then gets involved.
"They know the most about their own set-ups, of what worked and what didn't," she said. "It's trying to find answers and it's always problem-solving... some things have gone brilliantly for some sports and some obviously haven't.
"So, there's a big review process of every element of the programme about that and then as UK Sport, we meet with the sports and go through it ourselves.
"Then you look collectively across the whole team and see where learnings can be made. Every sport individually will have learned a lot from these Games, and some will be able to learn from each other as well.
"All of that will feed into investment decisions, which we won't make now until the summer, so we've got quite a few months until now and the decisions.
"Every element of information we can gather helps to make those decisions and we look forward to Milan in four years' time. It's very much a forward-looking process; there is the review part of these last Games, but actually it all adds to where the potential lies in four years' time."
Grainger is no stranger to an Olympic environment - she has won one gold medal and four silver medals at Olympic Games and she made her debut in Sydney back in 2000.
The 46-year-old said she struggled to watch the aftermath of Russian skater Kamila Valieva's performance.
Valieva competed in the women's figure skating competition after a Court of Arbitration for Sport decision, despite a failed drugs test.
The 15-year-old suffered a nightmare skate in her final free skate, as she struggled to land her jumps and finished in fourth.
After, Valieva's coach was heavily criticised for her behaviour while the young girl was distraught and in tears. The International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said he was "disturbed" by the "chilling" attitude of her coaches.
"I see it through an athlete's eye still, I've got an athlete's mentality," Grainger said. "Whether you're an athlete, you're in sport or you're a fan of sport, it's been quite a devastating experience to watch that unfold.
"At the heart of it you've got a 15-year-old athlete who was in tears in the biggest moment of her life because of a doping scandal. Nobody, I don't care who you support, what your background is or what your interest is, nobody from a human point of view wants to see that.
"The way it's been handled, the way that it's rolling out, there are still many, many questions to happen. Hopefully they are questions that will be answered very publicly, because it's not something you would ever want to see again. It has done damage; every time we see a doping scandal it damages sport in some way.
"I'm shamelessly a massive fan of sport and I really believe in all of the brilliant things it does to people individually and collectively. It's very inspirational, it's very aspirational and you see one element like that and it's just enormously disappointing to all of us who love sport.
"We've all got roles to play, we all can do a lot of work to make sure this doesn't happen again but on the international field it's a tough one to get right."
