By Aadi Nair
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Switzerland’s multilingual men’s curling team proved that sometimes a “word salad” is the perfect recipe for success as they beat Norway to cap their Winter Olympics campaign with a bronze medal.
On Friday, Yannick Schwaller’s Switzerland thumped Norway 9-1 to ensure they would not go empty-handed after missing out on a shot at gold despite an unbeaten round-robin campaign.
The team’s curlers come from different regions of Switzerland and speak various languages, making their on-ice communication both an entertaining watch and, when required, a tactical weapon.
“(When we began) we promised ourselves to speak French on the ice,” said team lead Pablo Lachat-Couchepin, who comes from the French-speaking city of Lausanne.
“I think the calls are being made in French, but everything else is a word salad. It’s fun, I think it’s very enjoyable to look at on TV. A lot of French, some English and some German – so everyone can understand a bit,” he told reporters.
Lying in the heart of Europe, Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh.
“Also for the opponents, sometimes it’s not easy to understand. So we like that we can switch to German whenever we play an English team, and we can switch to French whenever we play a Swiss-German team,” Lachat-Couchepin added.
The team, ranked second in the world and silver medallists at the world championships last year, were put together in 2022.
“It’s been a lot of work. When we created the team, we met at the Zurich train station, because we all come from different parts of Switzerland,” Lachat-Couchepin said.
“That was the easiest way. We said the first objective of the team is to have fun, to play good curling … I think what we showcased this week is pretty much what we wanted to do the whole four years.
“We’ve had a ton of fun on tour. We’ve become more than teammates. We’re real friends … It was a rollercoaster, but a very positive rollercoaster. We’re happy. We don’t know what the future will bring, but I think we have reasons to want to continue that way.”
(Reporting by Aadi Nair; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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