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. Frei, Christian Haller (the banker), Marc Pfister (the bricklayer) and Enrico Pfister (the electrician) test themselves next at the Asian Winter Games in China in February, and in October they need to be among the top three at an Olympic pre-qualifier for developing curling nations to keep the dream alive for a spot in the 10-team field in Italy. Frei first landed on his “Obese to Olympics” weight-loss journey after a doctor told him his health was on a terrible path.
He got a lawyer to comb through regulations to find the easiest sport to qualify in. The answer: cross-country skiing for the Philippines, given his dual citizenship. With time and money on his side after selling his business, he gamely hired a coach.