Alina Patz
Elisabet Gustafson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Alina Patz leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Alina Patz at #5 and Elisabet Gustafson at #10.
The case for Alina Patz
Six world women's championships, more than any other Canadian or European skip has managed, and won with four different teams, which is the detail that separates her from every other multiple champion. Patz was the alternate on Mirjam Ott's winning Swiss rink in 2012, skipped her own team to gold in 2015 at 25, and then threw last stones for Silvana Tirinzoni's team through four consecutive titles from 2019 to 2023, adding silvers in 2024 and 2025. She also won the world mixed doubles title in 2011. Her hitting accuracy is the technical hallmark, but the four-peat was built on draws into congested houses under the five-rock rule. Three Olympic appearances brought two fourth places before she finally reached the podium with silver at Milano Cortina 2026, and she returns to skipping her own team afterwards.
The case for Elisabet Gustafson
For two decades the benchmark for a women's career, with four world championships in 1992, 1995, 1998 and 1999, a total not beaten until the Swiss teams of the 2020s. Gustafson added two world bronzes and four European titles, and skipped Sweden to bronze at Nagano 1998, the first Olympic curling tournament with full medal status, finishing sixth at Salt Lake City in 2002. Her teams were built on a European style of aggressive draw play that ran counter to the takeout-heavy Canadian orthodoxy of the era, and they proved that a nation with a few thousand curlers could beat one with hundreds of thousands. She did all of it while training and working as a surgeon, and was inducted into the World Curling Federation Hall of Fame in 2012.