22 April 2023
It’s not cricket!
While many married couples have competed at World Mixed Doubles Curling Championships over the years, England’s Michael and Lina Opel are one of the few father and daughter duos to take part.
They had their first championship game together on Saturday afternoon when, by coincidence, they came up against the married couple representing Switzerland, Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann.
As well as being the only father and daughter team competing in Gangneung, at thirteen years of age, Lina also has the distinction of being the youngest competitor in the field.
So how did they get here?
With England’s established duo of siblings Anna and Ben Fowler stepping back this year, Michael and Lina took their chance by winning an eight-team national championship.
However, before that, curling had been in the family for a while. Michael explains, “I’m originally from Hamburg in Germany, and I did curling as a child. At one point it became competitive.”
Michael eventually moved to England, which is where he met Lina’s Chinese-born mother.
“When I moved to England, my curling life had finished, but then I met some friends and started playing with them. Then, we moved to Cambridge, which was very fortunate, because there is now curling in Cambridge. We have two hours of ice every weekend.”
When Lina is asked how come she took up curling, she simply points to her dad, saying: “I came to watch curling quite young and then I just started.
“My pals don’t think curling is cool – not at all,” she adds, explaining, “one of my friends came with me to try it and we had a bet to see if she could get a stone in the house. I won – now she says it’s quite hard while before that it was ‘curling…whatever…’
In response to how she feels about her debut on the world stage, Lina simply says, “I’m the youngest person here, so that means there’s less pressure on me. Also, we’re not playing to win, we’re playing for experience.”
And calling the tactics seems to be a family affair too. Lina says, “I think both of us call the game,” while Michael clarifies, “I call the shots and then she tells me why I was wrong, and …she’s mostly right.”
As well as being excited about representing England, Michael is realistic about their campaign here.
“The honest assessment is that we are the weakest team here, but, that said, we might win one game, and if all the stars were to align, we could get into a play-off and some lucky thing happens and we stay up, but that’s not what we expect.”
Regardless of the prospects in this campaign, Michael is excited about the future for English curling too.
He says, “The epicentre of curling in England is now Preston and the Flower Bowl. That is starting to bring up juniors and a few more people coming out. We’re having coaching sessions and summer camps now, bigger than before.”
Meanwhile Lina is soaking up the experience. “The best thing about this trip so far has been getting to meet everyone,” she says. “I’ve been to China but never to Korea before.”
She also has extra responsibilities while she’s at the championship, “I had to get time off school to come here, and they approved it. But we have some homework which needs to be done here.”
While Lina is clearly enjoying her experience, she also has nagging doubts about what might be happening back home.
She says, “Although I’m now an England internationalist, I’m worried about being dropped from the school cricket team because I’m not going to be there.”
Engage with the World Curling Federation during the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2023 on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Weibo and be searching the hashtags #curling #WMDCC2023
