Anette Norberg
Silvana Tirinzoni
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 Silvana Tirinzoni at #9.
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 Silvana Tirinzoni
Skip of the only women's team to win four consecutive world championships, taking gold in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023 with Alina Patz throwing last stones, then adding silvers in 2024 and 2025 when Rachel Homan's Canada finally stopped them. The arrangement itself was unusual and much discussed: Tirinzoni called the game and held the broom while Patz delivered the fourth pair, a split of the skip's role that several elite teams have since copied. She also won European titles in 2023 and 2024 and a long run of Swiss national championships, and finally took an Olympic medal at Milano Cortina 2026, silver after a 6-5 loss to Sweden in the final. She announced her retirement in the summer of 2026, ending the most successful sustained run any women's team has assembled.