Sam Rothschild’s 1960 Olympic Curling Caper

When Tracy Fleury (Sudbury, Ont.) and Brad Jacobs (Sault St. Marie, Ont.) step into the hack for Canada in Cortina d’Ampezzo, they unknowingly pay homage to Sam Rothschild.

Inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame in 1975, Rothschild – also the NHL’s first Jewish player – brought the Brier to Sudbury in 1953 and ensured that Northern Ontario would remain a distinct curling region in perpetuity. 

But there’s a Olympic connection between Rothschild and the Roaring Game, which very few historians know about.

In the winter of 1924, Rothschild was getting his feet wet as a rookie with the Montreal Maroons. Over in Chamonix, France, Great Britain captured the first gold medal for curling at the Winter Olympics, with Sweden winning silver and hosts France the bronze. 

(Canada did not take part but did win hockey gold, and the players met the Prince of Wales.) 

The Olympic curling craze has become synonymous with the Winter Games. Whether you are marvelling or trolling, the sport going viral every quadrennial has almost become a rite of passage. 

The Cortina Olympic Curling Stadium, formally known as the Stadio Olimpico del Ghiacio, beautifully restored for the Olympic return to Cortina in 2026, was constructed for ice hockey and figure skating for the maiden Cortina Games in 1956. Curling was nowhere to be found. 

Rothschild also witnessed the inaugural Brier while playing with the Stanley Cup-champion Maroons in 1927, and made it clear, in 1957, that he was determined to revive Olympic curling for the upcoming 1960 Winter Games in the United States. 

“If we get the OK, you might see curling in the next Olympics,” Rothschild declared to Canadian Press, while serving as the president of Curling Canada (then the Dominion Curling Association) that year.

“A meeting discussed a request from the U.S. Curling Association to have curling included in the 1960 Winter Olympic Games, to be held at Squaw Valley, California,” said Rothschild. 

“There has been favourable reception by the U.S. Olympic Committee. The Royal Caledonia of Scotland has been contacted for its opinion. This is because all curling clubs in the world are affiliated with the Royal Caledonian.”

Olympic curling in 1960, in northern California?

What happened? 

Nobody knows, but somebody was on the wrong side of the hogline. Curling made its U.S. debut in the 1830s, and the first national championship had just been hosted at Chicago in 1957.

The Olympic dream disappeared again, for almost 30 years. 

Curling made a comeback to the Olympic stage as a demonstration event at Calgary in 1988, a year after Rothschild passed. And with the return of the sport at Nagano 1998 – after another demonstration appearance in 1992 – the rest is history.

When Rothschild took up curling in Sudbury, it was played on natural ice. 

“It made quite a difference,” explained Rothschild during a 1982 interview. “Most of the stones weren’t matched. We had different weights instead of the standard 40-pounds today. 

“I curled for a team that went up to the Soo with the Northern Ontario Curling Association. I led with a pair of stones that weighed 60-pounds. It was the lead’s job to take the stones to the rink and put them on the ice, so they cooled off. That was my job, putting them on the sleigh after we got off the train.”   

As he regaling radio listeners about the miraculous virtues of Alisa Craig granite and the long circuitous trip curling stones make to Canada – and now the Olympic Games – he added, 

“In those days (when I played), there was no curling in Italy.”