Muirhead Urges Fight Against Curling’s Downward Spiral

One might consider forgiving Eve Muirhead for being a touch distracted.

The retired Olympic champion is at the Winter Youth Olympics in Gangwon, Korea serving as Team GB’s chef de mission. She’s a professional, mind you, and will no doubt continue to do an excellent job mentoring and cheering the 39 British athletes competing in 11 sports (including curling).

It’s just that news back home is grim. Curling is continuing its slow collapse in Scotland, at least at the grassroots level, with word the Perth and Kinross Council plans to close the Dewars Centre, the multi-use rink where Muirhead started her legendary career.

The council plans to close the rink as well as Perth Leisure Pool and Bell’s Sports Centre, and replace all three with one facility—but without an ice rink.

The news came on Jan. 19, the day of Gangwon’s opening ceremony and one day before Great Britain’s first mixed curling match, a taut 7-6 win over Germany.

Scottish Curling says the decision to close the “home of Scottish curling” is “cataclysmic” for the sport and that it will explore all options to keep curling in Perth.

World Curling, the sport’s international federation, maintain their head offices in the same city.

Muirhead, who sits on the rink’s board of directors, is aghast.

“This is going to cause a situation where I can guarantee there will be a spiral in up and comers curling in Scotland,” Muirhead said from Korea.

“We always want to protect our youth, we want to assure the next generation coming through … to lose one of the most iconic ice rinks in Scotland is just going to cause a complete downward spiral.”

Scottish rinks have been reeling in recent years. Braehead’s Glasgow facility closed in 2019—leaving the country’s largest city without a single sheet of curling ice—and Ayr lost its building in September.

A January 2021 story by The Curling News told of a frantic grassroots campaign aimed at ensuring critical government funding. That tale had a happy ending, as U.S. $2.7 million in direct support was pledged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another windfall, and some changed mindsets, are needed in Perth where the Dewers rink currently hosts 50 clubs and 700 curlers.

The sad irony of the curling closure comes during a flurry of rink business. 

The annual Perth Masters, a major European WCT stop, saw Scotland’s Bruce Mouat and Canada’s Clancy Grandy take the trophies on Jan. 7. 

Meanwhile, the European Junior Curling Tour is in town—with 14 teams competing—this very weekend.

Muirhead may be more than 8,000 kilometres away but she is exhorting her fellow Scots to battle on.

“It’s essential that we fight to keep the Perth ice rink open,” she declared.

Council’s decision day, barring an extension, comes in a matter of hours—on Monday, Jan. 22.

The latest word is that council leader Grant Laing will “be seeking the support of colleagues to retain an ice provision within the new PH20 as I and my SNP Administration know the importance of curling to our communities and cultural heritage,” he said in a Friday statement.

“I myself grew up curling locally and have always been a great supporter of the sport, but it is important that more young people take up the sport to ensure its long-term future.”

Moreover, Scottish Curling chief Vincent Bryson and longtime Perth Masters chair Peter Loudon, a 2002 Olympian and world men’s champion, will both attend the council meeting.