Olympic gold medallist Jen Dodds and men’s World Champion skip Bruce Mouat make their first overseas trip of the season in partnership this week to the Geneva Mixed Doubles Invitational (28-30 October), as they bid to ensure that they are fully prepared to compete in two disciplines at next year’s Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.
Mouat’s men’s team re-asserted themselves as the world’s leading quartet earlier this month when they won the Tour Challenge, the second Grand Slam of Curling event of the season.
Meanwhile Dodds, Rebecca Morrison, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson have been climbing the world rankings as they ready themselves to defend the title that Dodds won with her former teammates in 2022.
However, having finished fourth in the mixed doubles to just miss out on doubling up on medals at the Beijing Winter Olympics, where Team Mouat also reached the final, they are well placed to get the balance of preparation right after earning their selection in mixed doubles by reaching the final of every international event they contested together last season, including the World Championships. 
This season the 2021 World Mixed Doubles Champions have played just one event so far, winning the Stirling Mixed Doubles Invitational on home ice at the National Curling Academy in August and they know it is vital to get competitive practice.
“It is always nice getting back to play with Bruce especially in an international competition,” said Dodds.
“It is a high standard field with a small number of teams but they are all teams that we will probably be playing in the Olympics so that is good prep in building towards the Games.”
While their opportunities to play in events together are limited, they believe they are fortunate to have high calibre opposition to pit themselves against within the British Curling programme, with another former World Mixed Doubles Champion Bobby Lammie among their colleagues.
“We had a really good mixed doubles season last season, so we get limited prep but the time that we do get together we use that really well,” said Dodds.
“We get really high quality training sessions and the games at the NCA are all very competitive whatever team we play, so I think that has put us in a good position and events like this get us into the next gear.
“It is all about putting all these elements together to get us ready for Cortina.
“With 100 days to go coming up it is always exciting with another marker counting down to the Olympics and we have a busy schedule with our men’s and women’s events and also a good couple of mixed doubles events, so we are keeping busy and will keep learning and building on things we want to improve on over the season so we are ready for Cortina.”
Mouat reinforced that message as he outlined their plans for the weeks ahead.
“We have both got commitments with our men’s and women’s teams but we are also focusing a lot on the mixed doubles,” he said.
“We are doing a lot of training throughout the week in the NCA to try and be best prepared when it does come to the Olympics and we are both very excited to be participating in both disciplines as we did this before at the last Olympics, so we have that experience to hopefully do even better this time around.
“We have this event we are playing, then we are both flying out to Lake Tahoe for the Slam, but then we have two more mixed doubles events, one in Gothenburg in Sweden in December and then Tallinn, Estonia in January so really good events before we head into the holding camp together and there will be lots more mixed doubles preparation at that point as well.”
