Ernie Richardson
Eve Muirhead
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ernie Richardson leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ernie Richardson at #8 and Eve Muirhead at #11.
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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.
The case for Eve Muirhead
The most successful British curler of the modern era and the one who converted Rhona Martin's 2002 moment into a sustained programme. Muirhead won four world junior titles before she was 21, took the world championship in 2013, and won three European titles, the first at 19, which made her the youngest skip to do so. Her Olympic career was a long argument with near-misses: bronze at Sochi 2014, a fourth place at PyeongChang 2018 decided by a missed last stone, and finally gold at Beijing 2022, when Great Britain beat Japan 10-3 in the final for the country's only gold of those Games. She added the world mixed doubles title the same year with Bobby Lammie, then retired in August 2022 at 32 with eight Scottish championships to her name.