Few Olympians deserve a gold medal more than Eve Muirhead.
Since first gracing the Olympic stage as a fresh-faced 19-year-old skip at Vancouver 2010, Muirhead has conquered the curling circuit and filled her cabinet with Scottish, Grand Slam, European and World Championship titles.
However, the Olympic gold has proved far more elusive.
Back-to-back semi-final defeats in Sochi and PyeongChang have kept the highly sought-after gold medal match just out of reach, but Muirhead did end her 2014 campaign with bronze, becoming the youngest skip ever to win an Olympic medal at the age of 23.
Four years later, however, she suffered heartbreak against Japan in the bronze medal match, leaving Korea having finished in the most undesirable fourth place.
Poetically, Muirhead faces Japan again with the chance to avenge that defeat in the biggest match of her life: a long-awaited Olympic final.
Following the disappointment in 2018, Team GB’s Perth-born skip continued playing with Lauren Gray but parted ways with stalwarts Anna Sloan and Vicki Adams, whom she had shared the ice with for eight years
Muirhead revealed shortly after the Games that she needed surgery having played with intense pain in her hip for several years and had long suffered with arthritis.
Despite going under the knife and missing a shot against the Japanese to win bronze in PyeongChang, Muirhead fought back to mount another Olympic challenge, this time with a brand-new rink on the road to Beijing 2022.
Jen Dodds was first to join the refreshed rink in 2018, before NHS nurse and current vice skip Vicky Wright followed a year later.
A nine-woman rotational squad was implemented after Muirhead’s team failed to qualify for the Olympics at the 2021 World Championships after finishing eighth, before lead Hailey Duff was selected to complete the quartet.
And the new Team Muirhead gelled immediately, being crowned European champions in November.
They were forced to come back from the abyss in the Olympic Qualifying Event, after losses to Turkey and South Korea put them on the verge of missing out, to book their spots on the plane to the Chinese capital and giving Muirhead a shot at a fourth Games.
The three-time Olympian took to curling at a very young age, as her father Gordon was a two-time world championship silver medallist who keenly introduced her to the sport.
A natural sportsperson and scratch golfer, Muirhead even turned down a golfing scholarship in America so that she could concentrate on the roaring game.
The dream of Olympic gold has been at the forefront of the 31-year-old’s mind for over a decade and, while fortune may have escaped her in the past, the journey to this final suggests that perhaps the stars are aligning.
In Beijing, Team Muirhead’s hopes of round robin qualification were hanging by a thread, after losing 8-4 to China with one match to go.
Needing a win over the Russian Olympic Committee and several results to go their way, Muirhead’s rink’s hopes of a medal shot were hanging by a thread.
But the British women did their job by beating ROC and when Sweden and Korea got the wins they needed, Team Muirhead edged through thanks to a superior draw shot challenge record, but the drama was far from over as they headed to the semi-final.
Sweden stormed to a convincing 4-0 lead after the first end – something that Team GB coach David Murdoch said left his team’s chances of winning at ten percent – making it seem like history would repeat itself and hand Muirhead a hat-trick of semi-final defeats.
THAT @evemuirhead shot 😍#miraCURLonice 🥌 #TeamGB | #Beijing2022 pic.twitter.com/lb5Wv8Re44
— Team GB (@TeamGB) February 18, 2022
But the British skip held her nerve and defied the odds to guide her rink of Olympic debutants to victory, producing the shot of the match in the ninth end with the hammer to give Team GB a crucial four points.
The road to the final has been far from straightforward for Muirhead, but her new and inexperienced rink will head into the final having won every competition they have entered, incredibly finding themselves just one game away from adding the Olympic Winter Games to that record.