As Jen Dodds and her teammates get ready to compete at this week’s Perth Masters (January 15-18), the lone member of the team that won gold for Great Britain four years ago who will get the chance to defend that title is relishing what she is calling a bonus opportunity to finalise their competitive preparations.
With just three weeks to go until the Milan-Cortina Games get underway, Dodds is preparing to once again compete in two events as she and World Champion men’s skip Bruce Mouat prepare to set things rolling by contesting the mixed doubles before lining up with their respective teams in the women’s and men’s team events. 
Having taken on a similarly challenging schedule in Beijing four years ago, where they suffered an agonising fourth place finish before bringing home GB’s only medals of the Games in the team events, they know exactly what is required.
“I feel we’ve balanced our schedules really well,” she said.
“Bruce had his last competition which was the Slam last week ahead of some down time and I’ve had that down time ahead of this last event.
“Next week we’ll get back to training together again and balancing our mixed doubles and men’s and women’s team duties heading into the Olympics, but with just a few weeks until they get underway it all starts to get very exciting now.”
Dodds has consequently welcomed the schedule change which means that she and teammates Rebecca Morrison, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson get this additional chance to hone their competitive preparations in front of home support against some of the opposition, they will face in Italy, as well as one another.
The quartet line up in the same qualifying section as their fifth player for the Olympics as Fay Henderson, leads her regular teammates, the current Scottish Champions, into action in the Dewar’s Centre, with a powerful field also including Team Constantini, who will represent the host nation at the Olympics and Denmark’s former European Champions Team Dupont.
“Getting the chance to have another competition with our women’s team is really good,” said Dodds.
“Originally I wasn’t going to be playing this event, so it feels like a bonus. 
“We were all prepared for the fact that the Slam in December was going to be our last event together ahead of the Olympics, but we’ve grabbed this opportunity with both hands after a really good chunk of time training technically and as a team and we’re all feeling in a really good place.
“I think that’s a real momentum boost for us going into the weekend, which is now a last chance to put things into practice before the Olympics.
“We’ve got a couple of things we want to work on, so this is almost a mini trial run.
“There’s a few Olympic teams that will be there, so it’s good to have the chance to play them at this stage and there are some other very good teams here that are not going to the Olympics, so we know we will have to consistently play well throughout the competition, just as we will in Cortina where we’ll have to play nine very good games to be in the hunt for the semi-finals.
“We just want these high standard games that will let us put all the things we’ve been working on into practice.”
As well as being the only member of the Milan-Cortina women’s team to have experienced Olympic action previously, Dodds is also the only one of them to have tasted victory in this event, albeit that 2020 success in a team that included fellow future Olympic gold medallists Eve Muirhead and Vicki Wright now feels like a distant memory.
“Lifting this trophy feels such a long time ago,” she said, with a wistful laugh.
“However it’s nice to return to a competition that you’ve won before, where you know you’ve done it and we know we have every chance of doing it again this time.”
Images: British Curling/PPA Graeme Hart
