Kirsty Muir is still in her final year at school but has already finished project Olympics, inspired by a hero turned team-mate.
The Aberdeen star is the youngest member of Team GB and rapid progress on the freestyle skiing circuit has been rewarded with a dream Olympic debut aged just 17.
Muir, a pupil at Bucksburn Academy, first stepped on skis aged three and was in the British set-up by the age of 13, all the way idolising history-making freeskier James Woods.
Woods became the first British man to win a World Championship gold medal on snow in 2019, finishing fifth in slopestyle at Sochi 2014 and fourth at the last Games in PyeongChang.
Once the subject of one of Muir’s school presentations, the pair are now both on Team GB.
“I mean, I don’t mind if you tell him!” laughed the teenager. “It was just a silly kid thing.
“I was really inspired by PyeongChang, I watched the whole run and really looked up to James. It’s so cool to be on the same team as him and skiing with him is so much fun.
“Some people thought this Games would be too soon for me, a bit of a stretch, but I really trained hard and I’m so happy to have got here.”
On Muir’s classroom tribute, Woods said: “I can’t believe that, I can’t imagine being anyone’s school project, I wasn’t exactly the world’s best student!
“Being an inspiration is pretty cool but she didn’t need me to make it, she was going places whatever happened, she’s a serious talent.”
Muir has another year to run at secondary school, studying Chemistry, PE and History. The plan is to take agap year and then go to university.
A prestigious invite to her first X Games last month and a first World Cup medal last March has capped a remarkable rise for the Scottish youngster.
Alongside 2018 bronze medallist Izzy Atkin and three-time Olympian Katie Summerhayes, she will take on the rails and jumps of slopestyle.
Beijing organisers have dreamt up a widely-heralded course with features by the Great Wall of China.
“I’m so excited about the course,” said Muir. “We just came from X Games which is a really big course.
“I like the mix of the rails and the jumps – in the UK we do a lot of the rails, there’s a lot of creativity in the course. I’m really happy with my skiing and ready to go.”
Curlers leading from the front
Scotland’s curlers will have the honour of opening the sporting action in Beijing with Bruce Mouat and Jennier Dodds getting Team GB under way in the mixed doubles.
The world champions face Sweden, who won bronze behind them in Aberdeen last year, on Thursday in the first of nine round robin games at the Ice Cube.
Dodds and Mouat, lifelong friends having met at Edinburgh’s Gogar Park Club, are the first Team GB curlers to take on two disciplines at a single Games.
“It is a real honour to be the first Brits to have a chance at the double,” said Dodds.
“We know that we have put a lot of hard work into the mixed doubles and the men’s and women’s event and doing it as reigning world champions I think is a good thing.
“We know the standard we can play at and at the same time everyone else does as well. They need to come out and play really well to beat us and we know we need to keep playing at the high level that we know we can.
“So, I don’t feel that we have any additional pressure. It is just that we have to keep doing what we do well and not really think about the opposition. If we just keep playing our game that’s our most important thing.”
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