Caithenss, the first female president of any Olympic Winter Sports Federation, began curling in the 1980s, playing for the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, the mother club of the sport which is based in Edinburgh.

Curling was hailed as one of the successes of this year's Winter Olympics in Sochi.

It also proved during at the Winter Paralympics, which will have particularly satisfied Caithness as she helped first get it on the programme at Turin 2006. 

The Presidential election is due take place at the WCF Annual General Assembly, scheduled to be held on September 7 at the World Curling Congress in American city Reno next month.

Kate Caithness oversaw a successful curling competition at Sochi 2014, where even Russian President Vladimir Putin turned up to watch ©WCF

The Assembly will also signal the introduction of a new Board structure, which was approved by member associations at the 2013 Annual General Assembly.

The new structure will comprise eightdirectors in total; a President, three vice-presidents from the three regional WCF zones, and another four Board directors.

All 53 member associations are eligible to nominate candidates for the positions.

Elections for the positions will also take place at the WCF Annual General Assembly.

The nominations for the three vice-presidents are Canada's Graham Prouse, the only nomination for the Americas zone, and Australia's Hugh Millikan, the sole candidate nominated from the Pacific-Asia zone.

From Europe, both current vice-president Bent Ånund Ramsfjell from Norway and Robert Susanj from Slovenia have been nominated, with only one position available as the European zone vice-president.

Eight candidates have been nominated for the other four Board Director positions.

They are America's Albert "Andy" Anderson, Scotland's Hew Chalmers, China's Li Dongyan, Canada's Laura Lochanski, Japan's Toyokazu Ogawa, Sweden's Leif Öhman, The Netherlands' Gerrit-Jan Scholten and Russia's Michael Stepanyants.

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