Olympic coach appointments

David Hay and Nancy Murdoch are to be the coaches for the British curling teams at the Vancouver Olympics. The announcement was made by British Curling today, following interviews last month. The posts were originally advertised in November. The full press release is printed here.

David Hay was the coach of David Murdoch's team at the 2007 European Championships, bringing home the gold medals.

Nancy Murdoch is currently the Royal Club's Performance Development coach, a job she will have to relinquish when the two coaches take up their posts in March.

In addition Gary Anderson has been appointed as High Performance Advisor for the Olympic Programme. Anderson is currently a Performance Director with Elite-Performance which offers performance coaching, testing and training camps for athletes of all abilities. He has an extensive background in world class sport including athletics and professional football. Gary was Performance Manager for judo at the 2004 Olympic Games and was Programme Advisor to the Great Britain Olympic Curling Teams in 2005-6. His photo is here.

All three will work alongside Derek Brown, British Curling’s Performance Director, in the run up to the Vancouver Games. Tom Pendreigh, Team Coach for Paralympics, and Hew Chalmers, British Curling Team Co-ordinator, complete the Performance Team for the next Olympics.

Now that the administrative and coaching positions have been filled, it remains for the curlers to be selected to the squads. There will be a maximum of eight athletes in each of the men's and women's squads. According to the information published previously by British Curling, the squads will be selected in May 2008, and each squad will then be reduced to five in May 2009, allowing time to compete as a team in the build up to the 2010 Games.

Pics of David Hay and Nancy Murdoch are by Bob.