A curler who struck gold at this year’s Winter Olympics is retiring from the sport full-time, to focus on her family and her career as a nurse in the NHS.

Vicky Wright, a staff nurse at Forth Valley Hospital in Scotland, was part of the team led by fellow Scot Eve Muirhead that clinched Great Britain’s only gold medal at the Beijing Games.

She said winning there had been “the most incredible experience” as she announced she was retiring from the sport full-time “to fully invest my time into my nursing career and family life”.

Ms Wright, who is due to marry her fiance in the summer, spoke about the “challenges” she had faced “balancing the demands of training full-time with working a few shifts per week in a highly pressurised hospital environment”.

And she said she was “incredibly proud of how I achieved my curling goals, particularly in this last year when I kept up my shift work as an NHS staff nurse during a global pandemic”.

The Olympic champion stated: “To turn up at training in the final few months of preparation for the Games on the back of a night shift was a privilege, not a chore.”

Vicky Wright said she wanted to ‘fully invest’ in her family and her nursing career (Andrew Milligan/PA)

She thanked her colleagues at Forth Valley Hospital in Larbert for their “unwavering support “, and added: “The reception I received on my return from Beijing is something I will remember forever.”

The nurse also paid tribute to her former teammates, saying “each of them is unique in their own way” and they had all helped her to “be the curler I am today”.

Ms Wright continued: “Last but not least I could not have achieved so much without the support of my family, friends and my fiance Greg, who I will be marrying in the summer.”

The curler said she would never forget the reception she received from hospital colleagues when she returned from Beijing. (Andrew Milligan/PA)

And she said while she was retiring from full-time curling, she hoped “not to be a stranger to the game” – hinting that she could still play competitively.

Ms Wright said: “I plan to keep my eye in and play some games with friends and who knows… you might see us on the ice at an event next season.”