Olympic mixed curling team is a match made in heaven ... well, actually Duluth

The Pickwick is a comfortable, popular restaurant in Duluth that has been in operation since 1914. The Wright family has owned and run the place since 2010, and they are curling fans.

Gold medalist curler John Shuster, from nearby Chisholm, was a manager at the Pickwick from 2010 to ’13.

It was at this location where Korey Dropkin met Cory Thiesse for a drink in 2022. And a proposal.

“And there’s no better place than the Pickwick to do something like that,” Dropkin said. “So we were having a beverage, and kind of made small talk early on. And I was just like, you know what, let’s cut straight to it.

“You want to curl mixed doubles with me?”

Dropkin and Thiesse had known each other since 2011, when they met at a junior tournament. Both had tried to qualify in mixed doubles in each of the past two Olympic cycles, but they couldn’t break through with other partners. The time came to try something different. Besides, Thiesse’s mother, Linda Christensen, had been putting a bug in Dropkin’s ear for years about partnering with Thiesse.

“So after the last Olympic quad, I think both of us were kind of ready for a change,” Thiesse said. “And Korey asked me to go to the Pickwick. Just the two of us. Thought it was a little funny, but it was just the two of us and kind of random.”

That gives Thiesse two opportunities to make history.

Shuster’s rink grabbed the United States’ first-ever curling gold medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. But no American woman has won a medal in Olympic curling.

“Not until Cory Thiesse shows up,” Dropkin said. “It’s gonna be an amazing opportunity. I’m looking forward to helping Cory be the first woman U.S. curler to medal.”

(For the record, Thiesse is married and Dropkin is engaged.)

In addition to chasing the podium in mixed doubles, Thiesse joined Team Peterson this cycle as skip Tabitha Peterson Lovick’s third. The rest of the team consists of Tabitha’s sister, Tara; Taylor Anderson-Heide; and alternate Aileen Geving.

Thiesse could bring home two medals, which would be a first for USA Curling.

“Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. It’s crazy,” Thiesse said of her chances. “Just had so many people to look up to when I was growing up. And I just hope that I can be that person for some little girl in the United States, see a woman from the U.S. be at the podium in the Olympic Games.

“That would be really special, and I just hope that I can be sort of that inspiration for the next generation.”

Mixed curling begins Wednesday, Feb. 4, and is one of the first events to take place at the Olympics. Dropkin and Thiesse begin on Feb. 5 with matches against Norway and Switzerland. If Thiesse’s rinks reach the medal rounds, she will end up curling on 17 days of the 19-day Games.

Their qualification for the Milan-Cortina Games speaks to their abilities. Along the way, Dropkin and Thiesse won the 2023 mixed doubles national championship, then served notice of what their collaboration could look like by winning the 2023 world mixed doubles championship, a first for the U.S.

Thiesse is from Duluth. Both her parents curled, and her mother is a two-time senior national champion. Dropkin was born in Massachusetts to a curling family, began curling at age 5 and later realized that if he was going to achieve everything he wanted he had to move to the capital of curling.

Both are elite shotmakers, and Thiesse displays supreme determination when she steps on the pebbled ice.

“She brings such a strong mentality to the game,” Dropkin said. “She’s a very confident individual. She knows her capabilities of making shots. She’s not ever concerned about who she’s playing against. She’s very confident that she can beat anybody on the ice. And you know that brings a calming sense to a team.”

Their fairly instant success is raising hopes that Team USA will land a second gold medal in the sport. Curling Zone has them ranked 16th in the world. But Ken Pomeroy — yup, the same fellow who does KenPom rankings for college basketball — ranks curling as well. And his website, doubletakeout.com, has Dropkin and Thiesse ranked first in the world.

Their joining forces has worked out so far. But it meant that they had to move on from old partners. So after saying yes to Dropkin at the Pickwick, Thiesse had to call her soon-to-be ex-partner to break the news to him.

“Yeah, I was with him for a long time, and it was, it was hard,” Thiesse said. “Growing up in Duluth, he’s been such a huge role model to me, and took me under his wing and taught me a lot about the sport.”

Shuster thought Thiesse should play with Dropkin and not look back.

“I’ll never forget when Cory Thiesse called me,” Shuster said. “She was like, ‘I was talking with Dropkin and maybe we want to try playing mixed doubles together.’ It was a breakup call. I was like, ‘My God, that sounds like an awesome team.’

“They legit won the world championship the first year there together. Cory and Korey just don’t lose very many mixed doubles games no matter who they’re playing against. So I have very high expectations and hopes for them at the Olympics, as I know they do themselves.”