Alina Patz
Ernie Richardson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Alina Patz leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Alina Patz at #5 and Ernie Richardson at #8.
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 Ernie Richardson
The first international dynasty and the team that set the technical template for everyone who followed. Richardson skipped a rink of his brother Garnet and cousins Arnold and Wes from Regina to four Briers and four Scotch Cup world championships in 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1963, a period in which the international championship was effectively a Canadian export. Their 1959 Brier win made them the youngest team to take the title at that time. What made them historically important was method rather than results: the sliding delivery, the willingness to play takeouts as a matter of course rather than as a last resort, and a level of practised consistency that European teams did not yet have. Richardson wrote several instruction books that carried that method abroad, and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1978.