2026 Olympic hopeful curling teams competing in Colorado are out to prove the sport is tougher than it looks

If you still think competitive curling is full of dudes who take smoke breaks at halftime, as they did nearly 20 years ago, maybe you could ask Lance Wheeler about one of his hobbies: Wheeler, a member of Denver Curling, likes to pace his friends in ultramarathons.

Clare Moores, his wife and teammate, works as a trainer with athletes at Green Mountain and Columbine high school and looks like she could beat any of them in a burpees competition. 

The 2006 Olympics was a proud moment for curling, when the sport broke through by matching, if not eclipsing, the TV ratings of popular sports such as figure skating and ice hockey. But the athletes, to put it kindly, didn’t look like the hockey players or figure skaters, and the sport has fought the stereotype ever since. 

That stereotype persists despite the fact that for years teams competing for the sole spot on the U.S. Olympic team in mixed doubles, as they are through Sunday at the Rock Creek Curling center in Lafayette, now look as fit as any winter Olympic athlete. Wheeler, in fact, played competitive hockey all through college and a little beyond. 

“If you want to compete at the top level in curling, you for sure have to be an athlete,” said Wheeler. Wheeler and Moores are among the 10 teams competing in Lafayette.

But curling isn’t about to compare itself to downhill skiing, an event full of hardbodies who fly down icy hills at highway speeds and try not to die.

Sure, the sport is full of recreational players, much like bowling, Moores said. And curling is growing in popularity among 25- to 45-year-olds who still want to play sports but aren’t going to, say, go back to their glory days in football or soccer. Part of the sport’s appeal is that it’s open to all. (Moores coaches a Paralympic wheelchair curling team.) 

“The saying we had was, ‘It’s so easy anyone can do it,’” said Dean Gemmell, the CEO of USA Curling who competed for national titles, hosted a longtime podcast and co-wrote a book, “Fit to Curl,” on how to train for the sport. “But I don’t like to say that. You can enjoy it, and you can get to competent pretty quickly.”

Once you’re not embarrassing yourself, however, it’s much like golf, Gemmell said, as curling takes a lot of practice just to get decent and then pretty good. If you want to be competitive at the top levels, you have to be fit and train and then practice hours a day. 

Curling was always hard, Gemmell said. He would typically lose 4 pounds during a week of matches like the kind they will play this week in Lafayette. 

“But the level of play has really increased,” Gemmell said.

Cory Thiesse, 30, attributed the 2023 world championship she won with Korey Dropkin, 29, as much to their fitness as to their skill. 

“I’ll say a lot of it was because of that,” Thiesse said. “When you look at what Korey had to do all that time, popping up and chasing the rock, it can be a real tough workout.”

Starting young

Wheeler, 40, and Moores, 34, have played for a dozen years or so. This makes them relatively late to the sport. And that’s also what’s changed about curling: There are prodigies now with stories similar to the top Olympic athletes in sports such as figure skating and gymnastics.

Thiesse, from Duluth, Minnesota, began playing at age 8 and was one of the top junior women’s curlers in the U.S. before winning the last three U.S. Women’s titles. Dropkin, who also lives in Duluth and was born in Massachusetts, began when he was 5 and was a top junior player as well. 

Taylor Anderson-Heide and her twin sister, Sarah Anderson, both moved to Minnesota, the curling mecca of the U.S. (six of the teams competing this week in Colorado are from there), from Pennsylvania to devote their lives to curling. Taylor’s curling partner, Ben Richardson, 26, did the same thing. All three played when they were kids. Taylor and Sarah, who turn 30 later this month, were 5. They moved partly for Minnesota’s curling training center, where nutritionists and trainers could help them with their diets as well as their training plans. All three are competing this week, Sarah with Andrew Stopera, 27. 

Wheeler and Moores moved away from Minnesota, the opposite route most take to become top curlers, they acknowledged, but they did it for college and then work, as Wheeler is a scientist with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is not far from the Denver Curling Center in Golden. 

The two believe their athletic backgrounds helped them learn curling quickly and get really good really fast, but curling is not hockey, Wheeler said, and it took him years to become acclimated to the mental demands of the sport, something he compares to lining up for a putt in golf. 

“In hockey you train to react,” Wheeler said. “In curling you are in your head a lot.” 

Still, carrying a stick while skating all those years paid off. Most people can push a rock across the ice, he said, but sweeping, or assisting the rock to the red circle and snagging points, can make or break a team. Sweeping the ice for hours is so difficult, Wheeler said, that many recreational players can’t do it well enough to guide the rock. The most competitive teams can sweep a bad shot into its intended target. 

Fitness may be more important in mixed doubles than any other format, as it’s a faster game, with two players instead of four, and fewer rocks, meaning there’s no time for smoke breaks. It’s a good sport for spectators, and some believe the format was created specifically for television.

This is why Thiesse gave so much credit to her partner’s fitness (and her own) for their world title. Dropkin, indeed, attributed their fitness to a lot of interval training. (Interval training, in case you aren’t a curler, involves short bursts of intense effort, a tool used by athletes in sports such as football, tennis and distance running.) Curling is a lot like the biathlon, too, in the sense that players have to combine a hard, fast effort with an ability to recover quickly, breathe and make a tough shot. 

“My heart rate is in the 160s after a sweep,” said Dropkin, “and then I have to immediately get it back down to 120 to make the next shot.” 

Curling is a second job

When Dropkin was asked about the Nike shoes on his feet a few minutes before he took the ice for a practice session on Monday, or more specifically, if he had a sponsorship with the company, he smiled like a kid dreaming about Disneyland.

“I wish,” he said. 

Even if the curlers can match the athleticism of skaters or hockey players, they don’t make the same money (not even close) or receive the same kind of financial support from their organizations, Gemmell acknowledges. 

“If we had a transformational donor,” he said, “we could do that.” 

Many other countries fund their curlers, who then work on their sport full time. Most of the mixed-doubles athletes at this week’s trials, even the world champions, have full-time jobs. And if they’re training five or six days a week, as many are, making a living makes it hard. Wheeler and Moores called themselves lucky, as they have employers who understand the time off they need to travel to events. Not everyone does.

The two called curling “an expensive hobby” and said they’ve had to spend their own money at times to compete. 

Gemmell said he hopes to avoid athletes spending their money to compete, with USA Curling offering stipends and covering expenses, but he said the curling program does need more money to compete at the highest level.

“We are behind in facilities and spending,” Gemmell said.

He’d love to see a national curling center, along with a better development program and a way to get more kids involved: It’s not like many kids have access to a curling center to practice. 

“We would love,” Gemmell said, “to have a bigger pipeline.” 

Maybe if more high schools had curling teams, Sarah Hildebrandt would be competing this week. Instead, the Olympic wrestler was there to show that curling isn’t as easy as it may look. She curled for the first time, presumably for a TV spot on Peacock, which is streaming this week’s event, under the guidance of Madison Bear and Aidan Oldenburg, another team vying for an Olympic spot. 

Hildebrandt, who lives in Colorado Springs, won a gold medal in the 2024 Summer Olympics. She was just announced as a coach for USA Wrestling. She is, therefore, in better shape than most, including you, probably. But maybe not Bear, Oldenburg, Wheeler or Moores or anyone else competing this week. 

On her first shot, Hildebrandt collapsed in a flurry of giggles and complained about the “iso squat” she had to do to launch the rock. An “iso squat” is a fitness term for “something you’d do in a fitness class that will hurt.” 

“Core for days,” Hildebrandt then said, which are, kinda, stomach muscles you strengthen by spending hours imitating Cirque du Soleil performers. 

Oldenburg then showed her how to sweep. On her first try, Hildebrandt’s face was flushed, as if she’d just spent some time on the mat. 

“Oh my heart,” she said. 

Colorado’s curling culture 

Minnesota dominates the U.S. curling scene, something you could figure out at the Rock Creek Curling center in Lafayette even if you didn’t know that six of the 10 mixed-doubles teams were from the state. Just listen for all the “a BOOT”s instead of our “aBOUT.” 

And yet, Colorado seems to be emerging as a fair competitor, given that two teams from our state competed, or the same as Wisconsin, another dominant state. Both are married couples. All four are with the Denver Curling Club out of Golden. Lance Wheeler and Clare Moores qualified by winning a pre-Olympic trials event, and Bri Weldon and Sean Franey nabbed the final spot through points won throughout the season. 

It also says a lot that the Lafayette facility nabbed the mixed curling trials, although Gemmell, of USA Curling, raved about it this week. 

“This facility is awesome,” Gemmell said. “It’s the nicest club in the country.” 

Wheeler offered a little perspective. There are two official curling clubs in the state, he said, though that doesn’t include the many informal recreational players or even their organizations. There are, Wheeler believes, just under 40 in Minnesota. He’s close. The Minnesota Curling Association lists “a boot” 25 member clubs and another dozen that are unaffiliated.

But that may be to Minnesota’s disadvantage for hosting events, Gemmell said, because all the facilities are so packed it’s difficult to find a place for a big-time competition. The Rock Curling Club, which opened in 2021, has more than 500 members, Moores said, but it made room for this week’s trials. 

Wheeler and Moores recently spent six of the past eight weeks on the road to qualify. They have as good of a shot as any. 

“We’ve beaten every team here,” Wheeler said. “We like our chances, but we know it will be tough.”

Type of Story: News

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.