Danish Curling Team Chasing Sponsors – Everywhere

Denmark’s top women’s team have dropped their off-ice careers in hopes of another Olympic run to 2030.

Veteran siblings Madeleine and Denise Dupont are leading the charge, but they need sponsorship help to pull it off.

“I feel like I'm very busy actually not having a regular job, but like, this is a new kind of job,” laughed skip Madeleine. “So it’s way more busy.” 

Dupont, 39, left her career in marketing and communications barely a month ago. After competing in multiple Olympic Winter Games since Vancouver 2010 – including a 4-5 record at her fourth Games in Cortina last February – previous thoughts of retirement suddenly vanished.

“(We all thought) this is probably going to be it," Dupont said. “Last Olympics, blah, blah, blah. And I don’t know… suddenly after this season we just felt like everything clicked and we had such a good time at every event and it was just really fun to travel, (and we felt) this can’t be over. 

“We also realized that we can’t just go back to working full-time and then kind of playing here and there. That doesn’t work either.”

The squad, which includes Mathilde Halse and Jasmine Holtermann, made the big decision despite learning their national federation wouldn’t be funding them for the next two years. 

Danish Olympic funding resources for 2026-27 and 2027-28 will be focussed on summer sports in the upcoming Olympic Games in Los Angeles. 

“I feel like it’s either full-time or it’s nothing,” said Dupont. “I have a hard time going back to, let’s just work full time. Eat in the car every day, like back and forth from training, get home really late, go to the rink at 6:00 a.m… that kind of life. 

“Not that it hasn’t been fun for a few years, but I’m not made for that anymore. I don’t feel like it’s super fun to practice every night after eight hours of regular work.”

Dupont released an Instagram reel as an initial domestic call for sponsorship interest, but her team’s search is international in scope. She recently made corporate presentations to Canadian companies already affiliated with the Roaring Game, as well as a  firm in China.

The skip, who made her debut world appearance back in 2004, is the same age as Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni when she made the same decision – in 2022 – to leave her career and focus on curling. 

The Swiss star won Olympic silver four years later, and announced her retirement last April. 

“I was at this event the other day, where someone introduced me as someone who had been to the worlds 18 times – and I was like, what? And the girl next to me, she was like, what? Is that right? 

“Like, it sounds like a lot, but maybe it’s true. I’m not sure.”

(I’ve got 17 world appearances for you, Maddie… but who’s counting, really? – Ed.)

“It does feel like, okay, you’re never too old to actually do something that feels just out of your comfort zone, Dupont added. 

“So if we have to do it, we have to do it now. It just feels like the right time to go for it.”