Sandra Schmirler
Elisabet Gustafson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Elisabet Gustafson leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Sandra Schmirler at #3 and Elisabet Gustafson at #10.
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.
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.