Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I looked ahead to the Olympic prospects for Great Britain. Jeanie shared her January books that included British authors and themes. Susan loved the memoir Raising Hair by Chloe Dalton.

Curling

A friend of mine curls locally, so I was going to attempt to understand more of this sport during the Olympics, anyway. But I got obsessed when the first match I watched was the Mixed Doubles Curling match between Team GB and Team USA.

They both went into the game undefeated in the Round-Robin tournament. Team GB had already qualified for the semi-final round. They won that match, so Team USA had to win more games to qualify themselves, but they got there.

Team USA is Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin. Teammates, apparently, call them Girl Cory and Boy Korey. Both live in Duluth, Minnesota where Cory grew up and Korey went to college.

Team GB is Jennifer Dodds and Bruce Mouat. Both are from Scotland, the birthplace of curling — there are historical artifacts that indicate that curling was played in Scotland in the early 1500s!

My ideal for the finals would have been to see a rematch in the gold medal round.

The timing was right for me to watch the semi-finals live, so that was fun. Sweden played a fabulous game against Great Britain, scoring five in one end (an end is like an inning in baseball). Scores are typically one or two. Team USA came from behind to beat a terrific home team of Italy in the semi-finals.

That set us up for Team USA against Sweden in the gold medal round and Team GB against Italy playing for the bronze.

Princess Anne attended the bronze medal game to cheer Team GB. She sat next to former British curler and current women’s team coach, Eve Muirhead. It was a hard-fought game, but the home team of Italy came out on top to get the bronze. The later game was also fun to watch — Sweden won the gold and USA got the silver.

We’ll get to see Jennifer Dodds and Cory Thiesse again in the Women’s Tournament and Bruce Mouat again in the Men’s Tournament.

Ice Dance

Fear and Gibson during the gala at the 2025 World Championships By FloweringDagwood – Own work, CC BY 4.0, Link

I managed to catch Team GB live for both the Rhythm Dance and the Free Dance for ice dancing. Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson are amazing performers and they chose very British themes for both dances.

All the teams danced to 90s music in the Rhythm Dance. Fear and Gibson chose the Spice Girls, naturally. Such a fun routine!

For the Free Dance, they skated onto the ice wearing tartan, signaling a Scottish Highland dance-inspired routine. I recognized a bunch of the music — Loch Lomond, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), and a up-tempo version of Auld Lang Syne. The audience loved it and so did I.

They had some technical problems and didn’t get very close to the podium but they sure brought British fun to that rink.

Medal Count

I wrote last week that the Brits are hoping to break their record of five medals at the Winter Olympics. I’m sure that a medal for Mixed Doubles curling or Ice Dance would have helped.

As I write this on Wednesday night, Team GB has yet to earn a medal, but there are still lots of Olympics to come.