And, as had been the case on the ice sheet of the Beijing Aquatics Centre, the 31-year-old from Perth did not disappoint, generously crediting her former coach and mentor.

"It's funny because several months before I came here I was getting interviewed for a documentary about Rhona's 20-year anniversary," said Muirhead, who was 11 when Martin - who has since reverted to her maiden name of Howie - rolled the "Stone of Destiny" to secure a 5-4 win over Switzerland with the last throw of the final at the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics.

"I remember saying in that, 'I would love to follow Rhona's footsteps. I would love to do what she did because I remember staying up watching it'.

"To have this moment now and know that I followed in Rhona's footsteps and have this gold medal around my neck, is something very, very special.

"I can't thank Rhona enough for all of her help and support through the years to help me get here."

Howie witnessed the latest triumph in Beijing as part of the BBC commentary team.

For Muirhead, who had career-saving surgery on an arthritic hip in 2018, it was fourth-time lucky as skip of the GB team after failing to progress from the group stages at the Vancouver 2010 Games, earning bronze at the Sochi 2014 Olympics and losing the bronze-medal match four years ago in Pyeongchang.

This intensely Scottish lass has now appeared in as many Olympics as World Bagpiping Championships - and she already has her portrait on display at the National Galleries Scotland.

While Martin’s Olympic victory had taken place in an atmosphere of extreme tension, Muirhead was able to guide her team to a relatively straightforward 10-3 win over a Japanese outfit skipped by Satsuki Fujisawa - thus earning revenge for the semi-final defeat at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

But the victorious campaigns had in common a harrowing qualification process which left both GB teams on the brink of failing to progress.

I can recall speaking to a stony-faced Martin at the edge of the Ogden Ice Sheet in Utah after Britain had lost 7-5 to Germany in their last group match, meaning they were out of the top four qualifying places and their only route back would be if Germany lost their final group match to Switzerland, who had already qualified for the semi-finals.

Martin, whose nickname within the team was Mrs Merton, showed no mirth as she maintained: "We’re out. Both teams will be trying, but Switzerland will not do us any favours because they’re already through."

However, in a match that Martin said she would certainly not be watching, Switzerland defeated Germany 10-3.

That still left Britain needing to win two tie-break matches even to reach the last four. 

But this they did, beating Sweden 6-4 in the morning and Germany 9-5 in the evening before earning their place in the final with a 6-5 win over the defending Olympic champions, Canada.

The progress of Muirhead, Vicky Wright, Jenn Dodds, Hailey Duff and alternate Milli Smith to the Olympic pinnacle was hardly less fraught, however.

Muirhead’s rink needed to win their final round robin match against the Russian Olympic Committee - which they did - but also needed other results to go their way, which they also did, as Switzerland beat Japan, Sweden beat South Korea and Canada defeated Denmark.

When the dusted ice had settled the fact that Britain, Japan and Canada had all won one match and lost one against each other meant the tiebreaker process had to take the form of a draw-shot challenge.

This was adjudged by the process before each of the group matches whereby each team would throw two stones - one clockwise, one counter-clockwise - as close as possible to the centre of the "house" target area, with the score being an average of the two efforts.

Britain’s efforts throughout the group matches gave them an average of 35.27cm from the centre, 0.73cm closer than Japan. 

Canada, with an average mark of 45.44cm, were the team that missed out on qualifying.

That put Muirhead and Co through to an immense semi-final challenge against Sweden’s defending champions, skipped by Anna Hasselborg, which they won in epic fashion, 21-11 on the extra end.

"Nobody likes to do it the easy way, do they?" said Muirhead after the final. 

"So we thought we would do it the tough way."

A score of four in the seventh end for her rink effectively decided the destiny of the gold medals, and the tension departed. 

How different it had been at the Ogden Ice Sheet - a small edifice seating around 2,000 people - as Martin lined up that decisive final contribution to the final end. 

She did so amidst a silence so intense it was almost an unbearable sound in itself.

The Swiss stone lay alone in the scoring circle and it was hard to see the line Martin might take to dislodge it. 

But the yellow stone travelled inexorably over ice scrubbed and then left - "Hard! Hard! Hard!....Never! Never! Never!" - before nudging the red out of pole position. 

And turning, golden.

"It was a routine draw," Martin said afterwards. Hardly.

The impact of that 2002 victory in Salt Lake by a recruitment adviser, a customer services rep, a bank worker and the assistant manager of a debut recovery firm - earning Britain's first Winter Olympic gold since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean had won the ice dance at the 1984 Sarajevo Games - was immense.

The domestic TV audience alone witnessing Martin’s final shot was 12 million, and politicians proved eager to get in on the act. 

Prime Minister Tony Blair, touring a biotechnology research firm north of the border on that day, commented: "I’m well aware that the interest in Scotland today is not about my visit. It was wonderful, exciting, thrilling, and a brilliant performance."

Footage was also shown of Martin’s then husband Keith, daughter Jennifer and son Andrew watching her exploits on TV back home. 

"I’m still a housewife and mother-of-two in a small village in Ayrshire," Martin said. 

"That will not change."

Meanwhile the Safeways supermarket chain announced that they wanted to sign up the women whose brooms had scrubbed the Ogden Ice Sheet with such irresistible force to advertise their own-brand floor cleaner. 

Could it get any better?

Four years earlier at the Nagano Winter Games, where men’s and women’s curling made its full return to Olympic competition after its one official outing in 1924, the skip of the British women's rink, Kirsty Hay, had spoken about the responsibility competing teams had to maintaining the image of the sport.

Hay, whose rink lost an epic semi-final 6-5 to Canada’s world champion outfit before being defeated in the bronze-medal match against Sweden, commented after the historic competition: "Curling has had to show it is good enough to be an Olympic medal sport.

"We had a responsibility here to get people to change their attitude to the image of the sport. 

"Even when we met some of the other athletes out here they thought we were going to be Highland grannies."

Twenty-four years on, curling’s Olympic credentials continue to grow ever stronger. 

And for Britain, with Scotsmen contributing its only other medal of the Beijing 2022 Games, a silver - curling stands proudly atop a tartan podium.