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It’s unlikely enough that a Swiss entrepreneur could make a ton of money selling his online sex toy shop and decide his best weight-loss plan was to shoot for the Olympics in a sport, any sport. It’s downright incredible that Alan Frei could then manage to team up with three Swiss curlers — a banker, a bricklayer and an electrician — who, like him, all have Filipino mothers to make a serious run at this dream.
In a revival of the Olympics of the 1980s, à la Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team, the first Philippines men’s curling team has been successful enough to have a chance to qualify for the 2026 Olympics. And, succeed or fail, they’ve already sparked other Filipino curlers in Canada and the United States to follow in their footsteps.
Kerry Gillespie is a Toronto-based sports reporter for the Star. …