Anette Norberg
Sandra Schmirler
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Anette Norberg leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Anette Norberg at #2 and Sandra Schmirler at #3.
The case for Anette Norberg
The first curler of either sex to win two Olympic gold medals as a skip, taking Turin 2006 and then defending in Vancouver 2010, a feat no man matched until Brad Jacobs in 2026. Her career is remarkable for its length as much as its peaks: she won a silver at the 1988 Calgary demonstration event and was still winning world gold in 2011, twenty-three years later. That 2011 title in Esbjerg came after her Olympic double and gave her three world championships in total, alongside two silvers and four bronzes, plus seven European titles between 1988 and 2007. She competed at fifteen European Championships. In Sweden she is the figure who made curling a mainstream televised sport, and the pipeline that produced Anna Hasselborg and the current generation runs directly back through her.
The case for Sandra Schmirler
The most influential women's skip the sport has produced, and the reason curling had a face when it entered the Olympic programme. Schmirler's Regina rink of Jan Betker, Joan McCusker and Marcia Gudereit won the Canadian championship and then the world title in 1993, 1994 and 1997, a treble no other women's team had managed, and in 1998 she skipped Canada to the first Olympic women's gold at Nagano, finishing 8-1 and beating Denmark in the final. Her shot-making under pressure, particularly a series of last-stone doubles in Canadian playoffs, is still used as coaching footage. She died of cancer in March 2000, aged 36, less than two years after the Olympic title. The foundation established in her name has since raised millions for neonatal intensive care units across Canada, and the Sandra Schmirler Foundation broadcast remains a fixture of the Canadian curling calendar.