Henderson eager to lay down marker at curling worlds

It is a mark of a strength of Scottish curling that none of the four women who will take to the ice at the World Championships on Saturday did so at the Winter Olympics just a few weeks ago.

The one link between the two rinks is Fay Henderson, who was the alternate for the team who agonisingly missed out on a semi-final place in Cortina but will be skip for the impending eight-day global event in Canada.

In between times, the 24-year-old won her third consecutive Scottish Championship in her home town of Dumfries in what has been a whirlwind couple of months.

Not that Henderson is showing any outward signs of fatigue. She was in the gym within a few hours of landing in Calgary on Monday.

That motivation is founded in the opportunity to prove a point. Despite her domestic success, she has had to wait for a chance to lead her own rink at international level. That chance has now come.

Henderson, and team-mates Hailey Duff, Katie McMillan, Lisa Davie and Laura Watt, will begin their campaign against China on Saturday (21:00 GMT).

And they do so with a little bit of a point to prove.

"It's exciting that we're finally getting our chance," Henderson tells BBC Sport Scotland. "We want to show everyone at home that we could have been deserving of the opportunity before now.

"It's been tough to get excited because I've just been in survival mode to just like keep going, keep going, keep going. But I was sitting on the plane and I was like, wow, I actually now feel excited.

"It's basically been the best three months of my life so it's just trying to like soak all of that up and appreciate it while you're in the moment."

While Scotland are not the only nation to field different teams from the ones that competed in Cortina, the likes of Denmark, Italy, China and Japan will all send their Olympics rinks.

Henderson and her group are ranked somewhere in the lower-half of the 13 countries but are confident that they can spring a few surprises and potentially even emulate the sixth-place finish achieved by Rebecca Morrison 12 months ago.

And, with decisions to be made in the coming months on the team for the next Olympic cycle, they are viewing this as a chance to lay down a marker.

"We obviously aren't sure what the rest of the girls from the Olympic team are going to do," Henderson added.

"But to put together a good performance and show that we're a great unit, that can play great curling, and try and almost cement a place to continue on for the next couple of championships and get to the Olympics as well would be great."