Olympics-Curling-Swiss harness linguistic chaos on ice to win Olympic bronze

By Aadi Nair

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Switzerland’s multilingual men’s curling team proved that sometimes a “word salad” is the perfect recipe for success as they beat Norway to cap their Winter ​Olympics campaign with a bronze medal.

On Friday, Yannick Schwaller’s Switzerland thumped ‌Norway 9-1 to ensure they would not go empty-handed after missing out on a shot at gold despite an unbeaten round-robin campaign.

The team’s curlers come from different regions of Switzerland and speak various languages, making their on-ice communication both an entertaining watch and, ‌when ​required, a tactical weapon.

“(When we began) we promised ⁠ourselves to speak French on ⁠the ice,” said team lead Pablo Lachat-Couchepin, who comes from the French-speaking city of Lausanne.

“I think the calls are being made in French, but everything else is a word salad. It’s fun, I think it’s ​very enjoyable to look at on TV. A lot of French, some English and some German – so everyone can understand a bit,” he told ⁠reporters.

Lying in the heart of Europe, Switzerland ⁠has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh.

“Also for ​the opponents, sometimes it’s not easy to understand. So we like that we ​can switch to German whenever we play an English team, ‌and we can switch to French whenever we play a Swiss-German team,” Lachat-Couchepin added.

The team, ranked second in the world and silver medallists at the world championships last year, were put together in 2022.

“It’s been a lot of ⁠work. When we created the team, we met at the Zurich train station, because we all come from different parts of Switzerland,” Lachat-Couchepin said.

“That was the ⁠easiest way. We said ‌the first objective of the team is to have ⁠fun, to play good curling … I think what we ​showcased this ‌week is pretty much what we wanted to do ​the whole ⁠four years.

“We’ve had a ton of fun on tour. We’ve become more than teammates. We’re real friends … It was a rollercoaster, but a very positive rollercoaster. We’re happy. We don’t know what the future will bring, but I think we have reasons to want to continue that way.”

(Reporting by Aadi Nair; Editing ​by Andrew Cawthorne)