Curling is the hardest Olympic sport

With evidence!

Stefania Constantini, making it look easy (NBC Sports)

Back in 2017, Stefania Constantini was an 18-year-old second for Team Italy. They were one game away from the Olympics. They lost to Denmark 5-4, which included two burned rocks on skip stones that could have accounted for a potential three-point swing. It was a gut punch. I wrote about it on The Good Deadspin at the time.

This time around in mixed doubles she made the game look incredibly easy, becoming the first mixed doubles team to go undefeated at the Olympics, and the third team of any curling discipline since 1998 with nary a loss.

Of course, it is not easy. All of us who have stepped onto the ice understand this. But we know that it’s the one Winter Olympic sport that anyone can try and have fun. You don’t hear much about “learn to mogul ski” classes. Because why.

So a lot of times you may see prompts about how curling is the easiest sport. And how it’s not a sport. Lewis Black had a great bit about it (NSFW, start at about the 1:45 mark) back in the year 2000. We didn’t think much of it. We were so naive.

So let’s use 2000 as a starting point and pull some data using Wikipedia, a completely sound practice. Since 2000, there have been 53 Winter Olympians who also participated in the Summer Olympics. Here’s the breakdown of the winter sport in which they participated:

Bobsleigh 32
Cross-country skiing 7
Speed skating 6
Short track speed skating 2
Alpine skiing 2
Ice hockey 1
Biathlon 1
Freestyle skiing 1
Snowboarding 1
Skeleton 1

The current winter ones not on the list consist of figure skating, luge, nordic combined, ski jumping, and curling. Remember that this count includes winter athletes after 2000. Prior that, all winter sports had a Summer Olympian compete in them, with the exception of one: curling.

So by this highly specific but revealing metric, curling is the hardest winter Olympic sport.

It is a specialty sport, though. Not many people try it, let alone attempt it in a serious fashion. The best example we have where it went beyond talk was the four retired NFL players. Yes, they were all in their late 30s/early 40s. But they were fit as thick fiddles, talked to the right people, and could still beat the entire field in a game of flag football. But the gridiron foursome did not come close to making a national championship, let alone the Trials, and certainly not the Olympics. Of the four Jared Allen pursued this to the completion of the quadrennial and played on a team that missed out on Trials by three games.

So, to back up here: we’re not saying it’s impossible to be great at one sport, then move to curling and be great at it too. At the same time, we simply haven’t seen a bunch of elite athletes swarm the rinks and dominate. It’s not from a lack of access, either. Most of the dual-season athletes took to bobsled and there are less than 20 active sledding tracks in the world (two in the USA).

For one, the sport does require a fair amount of skill, and the amount of skill to go from first time on the ice falling out of the hack to elite curler groovin’ double peels like it’s nothing is probably 8-12 years. That’s a lot of time to dedicate to something where money is nonexistent until you become elite. And rare is the Olympic athlete who took this sport up in their 20s. I’m sure someone did, but I’m not aware of any.

And that’s the allure. It looks easy, but it’s not. And yet it’s not that hard that you can play. It’s the perfect sport. The “you can be an Olympian too” is simply a promotional hook. Come play the sport because it’s fun as hell and you’ll make 100 friends in a fortnight. And some of them might be Olympians.