Eve Muirhead to return to curling with Bobby Lammie in Aberdeen

Eve Muirhead will return to competitive curling on Thursday, 1 October, at the Scottish Mixed Doubles Championship in Aberdeen, where she will partner Bobby Lammie four years after retiring. The Olympic champion and her 2022 world mixed doubles title partner see the event as the start of a possible campaign toward the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.

The championship runs through Sunday, 4 October, at Curl Aberdeen. For Muirhead, 36, it is a return to competition after more than four years away. The outcome in Aberdeen remains open: her first matches, and any progress into the knockout rounds, are still ahead.

When Muirhead and Lammie play in Aberdeen

According to BBC Sport Scotland, Muirhead and Lammie are due to play six round-robin games across Thursday, Friday and Saturday. A playoff could follow later on Saturday, with the semi-finals and final scheduled for Sunday. Selected matches from the championship will be streamed on BBC iPlayer between 1 and 4 October.

Their return brings together a partnership that won the world mixed doubles title in 2022. Muirhead told the BBC that they also won that year’s Scottish championship before taking the world title. The two know each other’s games, she said, but preparations have involved limited shared ice time: Lammie is based in Stirling, while she trains in Preston. They meet every couple of weeks.

What Muirhead has said about her comeback

Muirhead has framed the return as a long project. ‘I need to remember I’ve been away for over four years now and I’m just back into it,’ she told BBC Sport Scotland. She said she expected their competitive instincts to return but wanted the pair to keep the event in perspective as they begin working together again.

She also described a mix of excitement and nerves before her first competition back. Muirhead told the BBC that the standard in Aberdeen was ‘probably one of the strongest ever in a Scottish champs’. She expected pressure and attention on her partnership with Lammie and said they would need to concentrate on the smaller parts of their game.

Scottish Curling announced Muirhead’s return in August, alongside fellow 2022 Olympic champion Vicky Drummond’s move back into competition. The governing body said both were focusing on mixed doubles with the 2030 Games in mind and would compete at Curl Aberdeen. Its chief executive, Vincent Bryson, welcomed their return ahead of the October championship.

How the return follows Muirhead’s Olympic retirement

Muirhead retired in August 2022 after leading Britain’s women to gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Team GB said at the time that she had competed as skip at four consecutive Games; her women’s team also won bronze at Sochi in 2014. Explaining her decision then, she said she had achieved her goals in four-person curling and ‘couldn’t have ended on a higher note’.

The new campaign is in a different discipline. World Curling reported that Muirhead had wanted the chance to focus specifically on mixed doubles after Beijing. Although she already has a world title with Lammie, she said she had no Olympic medal in that discipline. Their stated 2030 ambition makes Aberdeen an early competitive test, rather than a decision on any future Olympic place.

Other experienced curlers are also returning to or competing in mixed doubles. Scottish Curling quoted Drummond as saying her first season back would be about learning and improving rather than chasing results. World Curling identified Drummond and Euan Kyle, and Dodds and Orrin Carson, among the partnerships in the competitive picture.

For Muirhead and Lammie, the immediate question is how their renewed partnership performs across the Aberdeen round-robin games. The published schedule provides a route to Sunday’s final, but their results and any place in the later rounds will be decided on the ice over the four-day championship.