"From obese to the Olympics": How one man’s weight transformation inspired the Philippines to chase curling history

The distant, dull drumbeat of a treadmill thrums faintly in the background.

“Is it OK if I'm walking?” Alan Frei asks politely from the other end of the video line. “I'm trying to get my steps in. The weather is really bad in Switzerland; it’s awful to be outside.”

Aside from the occasional shake of the camera, the movement is so efficient that it is barely noticeable. And yet, in many ways, movement is at the heart of Frei’s story.

After selling his business two years ago, the Swiss-Filipino found himself on the receiving end of a medical intervention. Standing 1.72m tall, Frei weighed 102kg and his health was on the slide.

“My doctor told me, ‘Alan, you’re in a very bad spot. You’re on a bad trajectory, and you need to do something,” he recalls.

With money, time and an entrepreneurial mindset, Frei decided to pursue a radical fitness target to give his weight loss a sense of purpose. He considered what would be the “highest goal” and landed earnestly on the Olympics.

“I went through all the original regulations and I read everything together with a friend of mine. And then, pretty quickly, we were like, 'OK, there is zero chance of making it for Switzerland either in the Summer or the Winter Olympics. But my mom is Filipino.' And then we were like, 'OK, there might be a small chance at the Winter Olympics.'

"We came up with the event with the highest probability and that was to go cross-country skiing. So I went to the mountains. I got a trainer and I started with cross-country.”

Few Olympic disciplines are as demanding and gruelling as cross-country skiing, and Frei soon realised he had little appetite for the endurance sport. But then came what he calls a ‘miracle’ moment.

In his inbox was an email from Christian Haller, a two-time world junior curling champion. He had messaged Frei to ask if they would discuss an idea.

Like Frei, he was Swiss-Filipino and the pair were not alone. There were two brothers, Marc and Enrico Pfister, also with the same heritage - and both were expert curlers, having represented Switzerland at three World Championships.

For years, the trio had crossed paths at tournaments, imagining what it would be like to create a curling team devoted to the other nationality. Their search for a fourth member had even led to a small WhatsApp group called Team Philippines, devoted to their dream of making a Games.

When Haller and the Pfisters discovered Frei’s unlikely Olympic quest, they thought they might try and see if he would come on board. “They called me up and they were like, ‘Hey, Alan, do you want to curl with us?’ And I was like, 'I have never curled in my life but, you know, I have no talent in cross-country skiing, so let me try curling.'”

Trial by ice

“Nobody took it seriously,” Frei says, remembering his early curling days.

Even the hunt for a coach was far from simple.

On the advice of the Swiss Curling Federation, Frei had reached out to former national team member and recently retired curler Marcel Kaufeler to see if he might take him on as a student. When he shared his ambition Kaufeler rejected the want-to-be Olympian almost instantly.

“‘What’s going on with you? You will have no chance whatsoever,'” Kaufeler levelled at the businessman.

They soon reached an agreement, however, with Kaufeler coaching curling in exchange for Frei giving him advice on how to become an entrepreneur.

Having enlisted a coach, Frei then turned to the basics of curling.

He took no risks as she stepped onto the ice rink, even wearing a helmet to protect himself from the inevitable falls. But he freely admits he had completely underestimated his new sport’s unique skill demands.

“In the beginning, there was so much variation in my stones. I didn’t make it over the hog line; never made it into the house… and looking back, that was the easy part,” he muses. “Then the sweeping came.”

Strategic, physical, technical, it all came at Frei thick and fast. The scepticism Kaufeler had expressed for his newest pupil also lingered among some of his new teammates. But with the first stop on the road to Olympic qualification quickly coming into view, the team had little time to dwell on their newcomer’s shortcomings.

Besides the practical problems of brining Frei up to a good enough standard, they needed first to create an official governing body, which involved approval from World Curling and the Philippine Olympic Committee.

Reiterating their belief in their quest, the quartet sold their case to the higher powers and Curling Pilipinas was born. With everything officialised, the group began to meet regularly for team training while Frei invested every passing day in becoming a better curler.

"Then the momentum started"

By October 2023, just four months after the team’s first training session and six since Frei had taken up the sport, the Philippines entered its first ever bonspiel. The group flew to Czechia for the Prague Open to test their preparedness ahead of the Pan Continental Championships 2023 - the World Curling Championship qualifiers for the America and Pacific-Asia zones - four weeks later.

Their first game was against Italy’s second-highest-ranked team skipped by Fabio Ribotta, a European bronze medallist in 2018. It was then, staring down the lane with stone in hand, preparing to go as the team’s lead, that the harsher realities of Frei’s dream hit.

“I was so nervous,” the 42-year-old recalls. “I went into the hack. I played my stone, and it went just out. Like, zero points. Then, the second stone over-curled massively so you couldn't use that stone. And if my stones aren't in the game, you know, it gets complicated for the other key members.”

Eager to help rectify his initial errors and get his team back on course, Frei stepped into one of the two sweeping roles as his team began to peel the Italians’ stones. Reality struck again.

“Enrico went out. I was running behind and I fell. And the whole ice rink stopped and asked if everything was OK, and I was just lying there.”

Fortunately for Frei, now quite used to the unforgiving nature of ice, there was no significant injury other than slight pain in his elbow. He insisted that the group should continue. After five ends, the Filipinos found themselves 6-1 down and heading towards defeat before they started to find their groove.

“Suddenly we turned it to 6-6 and then 7-6. And then in the additional end, we won against the Italians,” Frei says beaming as he remembers the moment. “We were like, ‘What’s going on here?’

“And then the momentum started, and there was this moment where we created the team.”

Incredibly, on their competitive debut, the first Philippines’ men’s curling team went on to take second place.

"They had never watched a curling game in their life"

Riding high, Frei and the team then turned their attention to the 2023 Pan Continentals in Kelowna, Canada.

The event, created by World Curling in 2022 to mirror the European Curling Championships, combines teams from the Americas, Asia and Pacific zones and features an A and B-Division with promotion and relegation between the two. The top five in the A-Division are traditionally rewarded with a spot at the World Curling Championships the following year.

With only two tournament editions left to gain promotion from B to A and get on track to realise their Olympic dreams, Frei and his colleagues headed to British Columbia knowing they had little margin for error.

What they did not foresee was that others were also beginning to buy into their journey.

Arriving at the ice rink in Kelowna, Frei and the team were amazed to find that the local Filipino community had come to support them.

“You have like 60 Filipinos, all looking like our moms, coming out and cheering for us,” he shares. “They had never watched a curling game in their life; we had to explain everything to them. We had the second-largest fan crowd besides the Canadians.”

Inspired by their followers, the team made it to the final with the winners earning promotion to the A-Division. But, as had been the case in the round-robin, they found People's Republic of China too strong.

At the 2024 Pan Continentals, this time in Lacombe, Alberta, they found a similar scene and growing attention around their cause. “We had Filipinos from Calgary watching us," Frei reveals. "And when we talk about curling in the Philippines, they want to feature us in the media, and we always have interviews. And it makes me so happy to showcase a different side of Filipinos that people don’t see.”

Fortunately for those who had travelled to marvel at this unlikely quartet trying to tread new territory in the winter sports realm, Frei and the team gave them plenty to cheer.

They made the final again but this time, they beat Kazakhstan 9-3 in the final to move up to the A Division for 2025.

That promotion also saw them clinch a spot at the 2025 Pre-Olympic Qualifying Tournament, where the top three teams advance to the Olympic Qualifier proper. From there, the top two countries will secure quotas for Milano Cortina 2026.

The weight of delivering

Were Frei, Haller and the Pfisters to punch their ticket to the Games, their story might be seen as befitting of the Hollywood treatment like Jamaica’s bobsled team or British ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

The Philippines has never had representation in a team sport at the Winter Olympics and qualifying for Milano-Cortina would be an incredible feat. However, Frei knows he has his detractors.

“I completely understand that people are critical about me and I feel kind of guilty, to be honest," he admits. "Because other people put in a lot of years into that and I get the recognition after one and a half years.

“But I believe, with this story, we will get more people into curling and more people will see it. This is a net-plus for curling, I truly believe that. Seeing it on all the news out here in Switzerland, and in the Philippines, and also on the Olympic site, I think this is a net benefit because people see it and say, ‘OK, you know what? Let me try it.'

“The other thing is this is the beauty of sports. It’s not me buying a ticket to go to the Olympics. It's all about the hard work I put in. It's all about the team we are building. And in the end, you know, if somebody beats us and we don't make it, it's the end of discussion. But when we are winning, it's because we put in the hard work.”

Putting Frei’s own remarkable journey to one side, his teammates are also on personal missions. Skip Marc Pfister had to quit curling in 2017 after being diagnosed with cancer. Haller, 43, had always wanted to pursue the sport professionally but a fear of hardship means he has to juggle a job and training to be a part of this unique goal.

The weight to deliver is present for all of them but especially for Frei. "I'm there every day on the ice because I don't want to disappoint the team," he says. "I know I'm the weakest link in the team. And I just want to close the gap so that these guys can play their best game.”

"Let me shoot for the moon"

Frei, still patiently pounding the treadmill, never once breaks a sweat even as the conversation passes the 40-minute mark.

It’s one of the indicators of his happier and healthier lifestyle since embarking on the Olympic road. Another is the 27kg he has managed to shed thanks to his complete lifestyle shift. High-protein breakfasts have replaced the previous diet of espresso shots that used to kickstart his mornings; curling practice and strength training are now among his daily staples.

“I was a 40-year-old overweight guy who had very bad physical health and I changed my life around with sport,” says Frei. "What I've learned is just go for ambitious goals. Life is short. And we all know that at one point we are all gone from here. So, let me shoot for the moon here. Just try. Just go all in. Be very committed.

"You know, just having ambitions, that's not enough. But having ambitions and putting to working into it suddenly I realised, 'Hey, there are so many things you can do.' And that's also what we are trying to achieve here.”

Their next major competition is February's Asian Winter Games in Harbin, China. And then In October, they can move a step closer to Milano Cortina 2026 at the Pre-Olympic Qualification Event.

"Just thinking about it, you know, visualising it: we could walk in there with the flag representing the Philippines, making a splash out there and telling this great story, also telling the great story of the other three and that makes me it's so excited. It makes me feel alive and in the most literal sense,” Frei says, before bringing himself back down to earth.

"And then in the same thought, it's like, 'OK, put that to the side.' It’s a nice thought for 20 seconds, but this doesn't help me. What helps me is being on the ice, and being in the gym, and these are the things that help me."