Anna Fowler: I started playing in around 2004, so just after the GB gold in Salt Lake City. I was a sporty kid and the only rink in England was in Tunbridge Wells where I grew up. It was a bit of fun at first, but I soon got asked to play at the European Junior Championships in Copenhagen as England didn’t have a team. The first year we played, we were terrible and lost all our games!

After that, it became a bit of an obsession, as trying to get better is addictive. Since my first Europeans, we’ve had a lot of successes including a bronze medal at the senior European Championships and 8th at the World Mixed Doubles Championships last year. As you get better, the margins become smaller and smaller. That’s the real motivator – when you’re so close to achieving the big prizes, it becomes more of an obsession!

There is very little funding for English curling, so we’ve always had to work even harder to secure sponsorship or earn enough to pay for all our competitions. Though there’s still a lot of cleaning related jokes, in general people’s understanding of the sport is improving and most people I meet are really interested in learning about curling.