By Kevin Estrada
Alan Frei together with his curling teammates are hoping to perform well on their long and winding road in quest to qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
Frei, a relative newcomer to curling, joined the Filipino team in March 2023, to pursue his dream to become an Olympian. Sharing the same vision are teammates Zurich based Christian Haller, a two-time world junior championship medalist, and Pfister brothers of Marc and Enrico, who previously competed for Switzerland in world curling championships.
When he met the press Thursday afternoon, Frei expressed his lifelong dream of making it to the Olympics. All Swiss-born like Frei, Haller, and the Pfister brothers are eligible to play for the country because of their Filipino mothers.
“We are really trying to do history here for the Philippines. And we are trying to be the first PH Winter Team that ever competes in a Winter Olympic Tournament,” said Frei, noting that the previous six appearances since 1972 all came from individual sports, most notably two-time Olympians in figure skater Michael Martinez and alpine skier Asa Miller.
Frei was not alone in this quest, as they credit their gradual rise to the collective effort by the Curling Winter Sports Association of the Philippines, headed by Benjo Delarmente, as they now get a second shot at promotion to A Division of the Pan Continental Curling Championships this coming October in Lacombe, Alberta in Canada.
Last year, they came close to getting promoted at the first attempt in Kelowna, British Columbia, only to be defeated by a powerful Chinese team in the B Division final.
Apart from the Pan Continental, the team is also aiming for a medal at the Asian Winter Games next year in Harbin, China, wherein the host nation will be favored alongside South Korea and Japan who were the seventh and the tenth-best teams in the world.
For Frei, hope springs eternal for the sport, even if the chances of getting into the Winter Olympics were by a long shot, given their ranking at 51st in the world.
“I believe that we can, with our small part with curling, we can make it more diverse, that we also have chances in other sports and bring the Filipinos to the winter Olympic map.”
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