Our fascination with Curling began at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. This was the first time since 1924 that Curling was part of the official Olympic program, although it was a demonstration sport in 1932, 1988 and 1992. It turned out that our tour group at the Olympics was housed in a hotel in Karuizawa, the host of the Curling venue. Since we were going to be there anyway, we thought "why not check it out and avoid a long bus ride for at least one day". The organizers must have thought that no one would be interested because the arena was really small. I remember that we were in something like the 3rd row (out of maybe 6 or 7) on the side of the arena about midway down the playing surface. We had good enough seats that there were a group of team coaches sitting in the row in front of us. One of the Norwegian coaches was good enough to help us figure out what was going on. He told us that the key point was to forget about where the stone ends up on this throw. You have to think two or three throws ahead in order to figure out what is going on. Anyway, we had a good enough time that we again bought Curling tickets for the Salt Lake City Olympics as well.
Fast forward to 2006. We wanted to stay with a host family near Torino in a location that had good access to transportation. The closest home to Torino that would allow three people was in Pinerolo, site of the... Curling venue! Pinerolo, Italy had a population of perhaps 30-35,000 people, and more importantly, perhaps 5-6 decent restaurants in the downtown area. We soon discovered that most of the families of the Curlers as well as the coaches were also staying in Pinerolo. One night, we went to our now favorite pizza parlor. Rather than being seated in the back as usual, we were seated close to the front door. There was a big table near us of older people. I noticed several of them watching me. This wasn't unusual as I was wearing a hat and vest completely covered with Olympic pins. When we got up to leave, one of the women stopped Sean and offered him a pin. We made several pin trades including a Swiss team pin and a strange pin with a curling stone and four faces on it. I asked the woman what this was. Her English was not very good, but my understanding was that this was the Swiss Women's Curling team pin and that one of them was her daughter.
Several days later, we were in another restaurant when the Swiss Curling team and their coach came in and sat down at a table not too far from ours. Now I am not above using my son to troll for Olympic pins, but in this case, I thought that it would be cool for Sean to meet an Olympian. So after we finished dinner, I gave Sean one of my better traders and told him to go over to the Swiss ladies, hand them the pin and wish them good luck. Sean was not very keen on this plan, but he went over, handed the nearest woman the pin, mumbled something and was probably two-thirds of the way out of the restaurant before the Swiss women even figured out what was happening. Once they realized it, they called to Sean, but there was no way he was going back over there again without some support. So I walked over with Sean. The skip, Mirjam Ott, laughed, thanked Sean for the pin and handed him a Swiss team pin. Since I was there, I took out the pin with the people on it and told her that I was confused because one of the women at the table was a blond and there were no blonds on the pin. She explained that the fourth woman at the table was their alternate and then they all introduced themselves and pointed to their pictures on the pin.
We had a spare day near the end of our stay and were able to purchase tickets to the Women's Curling gold medal match, which happened to be Switzerland versus Sweden. Here is a picture of that match:
Ott is the woman in white on the right. Sweden was the defending World Champion and were ahead for most of the match, but Ott was able to score 2 points to send the match into extra ends with the score tied 6-6. Each stone in that final end seemed to tilt the match from one side to the other, but on the very last stone, the Swedish skip was able to score 1 point to win the Gold medal. You could tell how disappointed she was and we felt really bad for her. I found out later that the exact same thing had happened to Ott at the Salt Lake City Olympics four years earlier although that time, they lost to Great Britain and she was the 3rd on that team instead of the skip.
Ott came back for the Vancouver Olympics and we got to see her win a preliminary match. Her team easily qualified for the semifinals, but lost 6-5 to Canada and then 12-6 to China to finish fourth. Nevertheless, she comes into the Sochi Olympics as the most decorated skip in the women's tournament with 2 Silver medals, 1 World Championship and 2 European Championships. She started out the Sochi Olympics with a 7-4 win over the US although neither team played particularly well.
Getting to meet an athlete post 9/11 is very unusual. Mirjam could have easily blown us off but she chose to be kind to a little kid and his pin fanatic father. For that, we will be rooting for Mirjam for as long as she is competing. Go Team Switzerland!
Neat story, Steve (and Sean)!
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