A history-making American duo settled for silver but they might have just started a curling revolution

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
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The cruelty of the Olympics is that a person can do something no one expected – say, for example, play for a gold medal for the first time in US history in a certain sport– and then when the gold shimmer changes to silver, it somehow feels like a disappointment.

That is how Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse looked and felt after losing to Sweden, 6-5, in the Olympic finals of mixed doubles curling. While the Swedes jumped up and down with their brooms overhead, the two Americans embraced in what was a long, emotional hug. They did not come here for second place, even if second place ought to be celebrated.

Because there is no way to look at their silver medal except as a massive victory for them and their sport. They are not only the first US mixed doubles team to medal; Thiesse is the first American woman to win a curling medal of any kind. And she still has a shot at another – she’s part of the women’s team, which begins round-robin play on Thursday.

Maybe more importantly, they could be the start of a broom-brigaded revolution.

A week ago, it’s fair to assume that no one outside of Dropkin’s and Thiesse’s family knew who they were. In the span of a handful of effusive (Korey) and controlled (Cory) games, they have become at least semi-famous. Since coming to Italy and making their way through the round-robin, around defending Olympic champion Italy in the semis and into the gold-medal game, Dropkin went from 15,000 Instagram followers to 22,000 Thiesse from 10,000 to 12,500. And those follows are still growing.

The Olympics star-making machine has started whirring, and no sport is more ripe for some stars than curling.

Like clockwork, curling rises up every four years to grab Americans’ attention, convincing couch potatoes everywhere it is their ticket to the Games. Once the flame is extinguished, though, the sofa surfers invariably return to their pickleball courts and golf courses and forget about curling.

Let’s face it. Americans like winners, and the US hasn’t exactly had a bunch. Americans have two curling medals – the most recent from the men’s team in 2018. But Americans also prefer personalities, and in the fire and ice tandem of Dropkin and Thiesse, have finally found some.

Dropkin is like a WWE star vamping to the crowd. He wears flashy Nikes on his feet and a schmedium Team USA shirt to ensure his biceps get full respect. While the sport can be heart-attack serious while in session – think tennis-and-golf quiet – he plays to the crowd at every break. He dances. He points and, in a move that would Dean Smith proud, he points to Thiesse after every great throw.

As the American fans in the Cortina Curling Center chanted “U-S-A” in between ends, he happily threw up his arms to encourage more volume. When someone yelled, “Show us your biceps,’’ he laughed and when they yelled, “We love you, Korey,” he pointed in their direction.

He is the quintessential curing lifer. While other kids grew up dreaming of hurling a fastball, he envisioned himself throwing a stone. Dropkin grew up in Massachusetts, the second son of parental bonspiel (curling tourney) regulars.

His dad, Keith, played in college and together with his wife, Shelley, were regulars at the local club, the Broomstones. Eager to broaden the sport they loved to the masses, they coached a youth team, including Korey and his big brother, Stephen. Korey wasn’t even in school when he found his way to the sheet, starting to curl at five. He would go on to win three US junior titles plus a bronze at the 2012 Winter Youth Games.

Thiesse is his antithesis – quiet, controlled and polite. While Dropkin plays to the crowd, she smiles as one might in amusement at their misbehaving little brother. But Thiesse is also the engine that makes the pair rev. Given the chance to throw a hammer, it’s almost always Thiesse who sends it.

“She’s like Kobe Bryant or Caitlin Clark, just draining those shots,’’ Dropkin said of his partner. “She’s clutch.’’

Thiesse grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, which is as much as US curling hotbed as you might find. There are only about 185 curling clubs in the US (including one, the Loggerheads, in toasty Wellington, Florida) compared to more than 900 in Canada.

But the Duluth Curling Club is an OG, getting its unofficial start in 1891 when members strung a tent between two retaining walls downtown. That structure, not shockingly, was blown away by a blizzard.

Members then established a real building in 1897, and Duluth has since hosted two World Championships and an Olympic Trials. Thiesse’s parents were members and her mother, Linda Christensen, is a two-time US Senior champion.

“She often talks about having me in my car seat down at the curling club while she was practicing,’’ Thiesse said of her mom. “I grew up there with people who have supported me through every step of the journey.’’

The two met when Dropkin moved to Duluth in 2013 to train at the local club and they both went to school at Minnesota-Duluth. He started in mixed doubles in 2015.

After Dropkin failed to qualify for mixed doubles in Beijing, he made a daring pitch to snatch Thiesse from her partner, John Shuster, a US curling legend who led the men to gold in 2018. She, however, was ready for a switch, too, and so, in true American fashion, the road to silver was forged at a pub over an old fashioned (his) and a Moscow mule (hers).

The partnership delivered near instantaneous results. In 2023, they won the first mixed doubles World Championship for the United States. Two years later, they made it to the Olympics.

And now they have made history.

Curling, shockingly, does not pay the bills. Dropkin works as a realtor for the Superior Shores Group with Remax; he’s licensed in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Thiesse is a technician at a mercury lab. Somehow quad ball – think Harry Potter quidditch minus the flying, in which grown men run around with brooms squeezed between their legs – has a professional league and ESPN airtime and curling does not.

But curling is about to go pro. Or at least try to. It will launch the Rock League, a world-wide pro circuit that has secured a deal with CBC television. Dropkin and Thiesse are both part of Frontier, the US-based squad. It is not exactly the NFL, and it’s unlikely to sweep (pun intended) the world overnight.

But revolutions usually start small. Sometimes with just the right person throwing a stone. Dropkin and Thiesse could be those people.