Curling: Eve Muirhead to limit events prior to Beijing 2022 following surgery

Scottish curler Eve Muirhead will enter fewer competitions in the run-up to the next Winter Olympics after playing in pain for several years.

The Great Britain skip recently had surgery to help deal with debilitating pain and arthritis in one of her hips.

Now she acknowledges she may have to take more care over what events to compete in before Beijing 2022.

"For the rest of my career, I'm going to have to be pretty sensible and listen to my body," Muirhead, 28, said.

"It's about looking at our calendar and the events that are really high priority. The European Championships for us are, so I'm going to take it easy leading in to those.

"It just got to the stage that I had to do something unless I just wanted to carry on not enjoying it and really going through a lot of pain."

• 'Every time I played, I was in pain'

The former world, European and Scottish champion, who won bronze with GB at the Sochi Games in 2014, steered GB to a disappointing fourth-place finish in South Korea in February.

With Anna Sloan taking a break from the sport, Jennifer Dodds (third) and Vicky Wright (fifth) will join Muirhead, Lauren Gray and Vicki Chalmers.

"I'm going out to Canada and hopefully I'll be playing in two tournaments - then the European Championships in November is my big goal post-surgery," Muirhead added.

"We've got to look at the bigger picture and build towards Beijing 2022 and just leave no stone unturned leading into that."