Philippine curling team eyes breakthrough Winter Olympics stint

MANILA, Philippines – Vying for winter sport glory may be tough for a team representing a tropical country, but the Philippine curling team seeks no less than history. 

Although a handful of Filipino athletes already competed in individual events in the Winter Olympics, no team has ever qualified, which fuels Alan Frei and the rest of the national curling team to target the 2026 Games in Milan, Italy.

“We are really trying to do history here for the Philippines. And we are trying to be the first winter team [from the Philippines] that ever competes in a Winter Olympic tournament,” Frei recently told reporters.

Curling is a precision sport played on ice, where players slide heavy granite stones toward a target. The team with the most points wins. 

Frei, a Filipino-Swiss businessman, Christian Haller, and brothers Marc and Enrico Pfister make up the team, whose accomplishments already include a silver medal in the Pan Continental Curling Championships Division B in Kelowna, Canada last year. 

Haller also boasts two world junior curling championships, while the Pfister brothers once represented Switzerland in the World Curling Championships. 

“The sport of curling is like playing chess on ice. It’s a combination of strategy and physical skill,” said Frei.

“We have a huge advantage in the strategy part because we have the experience of the three guys who have played on the world stage.”

To reach the Olympics, the team has to at least duplicate its runner-up finish or rule the Pan Continental Championships to move up to Division A as only the top two teams will secure a ticket to the Winter Games in 2026.

Leaning on the team’s dexterity, Frei said the Swiss-based players, who were all born to Filipina mothers, have been zeroing in on the 2026 Olympics, which he described as the “holy grail of curling.”

“[The Olympics] is our only goal. So as a team… there’s like the only ambition there,” he said. “We, as a team, we do not have a plan B. Our only plan is to go to the Olympics. There is no plan B. We are not having any other goals.”

The Filipinos, who are ranked 51st by the World Curling Member Association, hope their recent stint in the Baden Masters in Switzerland, where they went up against the world’s top curlers, will help boost their quest for Olympic history. 

“Hopefully, this is a start of something special for the Philippines,” Frei said. – Rappler.com