CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy – A young Swiss curler is carrying on his family’s Olympic tradition at the Milano Cortina Winter Games, leading his team to an undefeated record in men’s curling competition.
Yannick Schwaller, now 30, was only six when he watched his father Christof and uncle Andreas capture bronze for Switzerland at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Today, he serves as skip for the Swiss squad that swept all eight matches in round-robin play to advance to the semifinals.
Speaking Wednesday from the same venue where his father competed in the 2010 World Championships, Schwaller reflected on the family connection.
“It’s awesome. In 2002, there was a bus going to get them at Zurich Airport when they came back, and I remember vaguely a public viewing,” Schwaller recalled. “That maybe sparked some inspiration early. I wasn’t really coached by my father, but it was always a bit of mentoring, when I had questions. Now it feels like a circle is closing. 24 years later, I’m playing on this stage as well.”
“He even played the World Championships here (Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium) in 2010, I think. So yeah, it’s just an awesome feeling to follow his footsteps,” he added.
The path to curling wasn’t immediate for Schwaller, who initially resisted the sport that made his family famous.
“I didn’t want to be a curler at first until I was 13 or 14. I only had football in mind and I played football a lot, we grew up next to a pitch,” Schwaller explained. “But then it (curling) grabbed me somehow, and I never looked back. My dad, he was so cool about it. He never said ‘you have to do this or do that now, you have to practice’. He really let me do my own thing.”
The curling tradition may continue into another generation, as Schwaller brought his one-and-a-half-year-old son River to the Olympics. The toddler gained internet fame as the ‘Curling Baby’ after cameras caught him playing with a curling broom nearly twice his size.
When asked about his son’s potential curling future, Schwaller responded with a smile: “He can choose for himself, I guess, but the way he’s attracted to brooms, he might be!”
