SOME sports stories write themselves, just like this one: four Swiss-based Filipinos and a Fil-Canadian, competing in a sport their tropical homeland doesn’t even have the weather for, are now one tournament away from qualifying for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
The Philippine men’s curling team—brothers Marc and Enrico Pfister, Christian Haller, Alan Frei, and Fil-Canadian Brayden Carpenter, the team’s newest member who joined only this year—is in Kelowna, Canada this week for the last Olympic Qualification Event (OQE). Only two teams will advance, and the Philippines wants to be one of them.
On paper, the whole thing sounds almost fictional. A country famous for beaches and basketball producing a world-class curling squad? It’s the kind of plot that would’ve fit right into “Cool Runnings,” that ’90s movie about Jamaican athletes trying their luck in a sport nobody expected them to touch. The comparison isn’t lost on the players, who may probably get the joke all the time, but may take it as a compliment.
Behind the jokes is a team that has quietly grown into one of Asia’s most exciting winter sports stories. Their training routine is as grounded as it gets—late nights on Swiss rinks, long drives after work, endless strategy debates, and the occasional attempt to explain to relatives back home why sweeping ice is an actual sport. The team may have probably resorted to simply showing video clips about the sport to make any explanation easier.
Their rise peaked earlier this year with a surprise gold medal run at the Asian Winter Games in Harbin, China, a win that made even long-time sports reporters double-check their notes. Suddenly, the Philippines wasn’t just participating and competing—it was winning. They defeated curling powerhouse South Korea 5-3 in the final round, and made history by winning the country’s first-ever gold medal in any continental winter event, and the first gold for any Southeast Asian nation.
Now they’re in Canada and facing a field of traditional curling powerhouses like China, Japan, and South Korea, them with deeper benches and colder climates. But the Filipinos insist they’re not intimidated.
If the stones glide their way, the Philippines could earn its first Olympic curling berth. And if they fall short, the journey—which already sparked curiosity, pride, and a bit of laughter back home—would still be a landmark of its own.
Winter may never come to the Philippines, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean the Philippines can’t make history on ice.