REPLACE RHONA'S STOLEN GOLD

GB star’s 2002 curling gold medal was stolen in 2014 and now Mirror Sport has urged British Olympic chiefs to lobby the IOC to produce a replica

- ALEX SPINK

TWENTY years after winning Olympic curling gold, Rhona Howie has been given new hope of finally getting her stolen medal replaced.

Howie is back at next week’s Games as a commentator, her presence in Beijing evoking memories of 2002 when she broke Swiss hearts with the very last stone of the final.

She was Rhona Martin back then and the ‘stone of destiny’, as it became known, brought Britain’s first winter gold since Torvill and Dean in 1984. A UK television audience of more than six million stayed up past midnight to watch the drama unfold at the Ogden Ice Sheet in Salt Lake City.

At the end of a marathon 13-match campaign, Martin displaced the Swiss stone from the center of the ‘house’ and she and team-mates Debbie Knox, Janice Rankin, Fiona MacDonald and Margaret Morton were presented with their medals.