The Aberdeen insider behind Olympic curling’s global TV moment

Next month’s Winter Olympics in Italy come with prestige, history and high expectations — but not, it turns out, stable Wi-Fi.

Tom Brewster, the silver medal-winning former Olympian and now sports manager for curling and wheelchair curling at the 2026 Games, is on a video call from the Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio.

The “Ice Stadium”, in co-host city Cortina d’Ampezzo, is the venue for all of the curling. It was built for the 1956 Winter Games and still retains its original wooden stands — which may be interfering with communications with the outside world.

On screen, Tom fades in and out.

But he is unfazed, suggesting that dodgy Wi-Fi has been the least of his problems as he prepares the stadium for its role as the biggest stage in world curling.

As he speaks from a hectic ice crew office, he fields constant off-screen questions while installation work continues around him.

“To be honest, I haven’t had a lot of sleep,” he says.

A different kind of Olympic pressure

As head of operations, Tom, 51, sits at the centre of a sprawling operation, responsible for everything from ice quality and scheduling to the smooth running of competition behind the scenes.

It is a very different level of responsibility from his days as a player.

At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Tom was part of the silver-medal-winning Great Britain men’s team as the alternate — effectively the fifth member of the four-man squad.

“It’s a wee bit more relaxed as a player,” he says.

“When you’re playing, you’ve got three or four teammates, a couple of coaches and a physio and that’s you.”

Now, the scale is far greater.

“Right now I’ve got a workforce of a hundred here, and another 15 back at the rink,” he says. “There’s a lot more answers and a lot more guidance needed.”

Why this Olympics matters for curling on screen

The Olympic curling begins on Wednesday, February 4 and runs through to the final day of competition, outlasting the Games themselves, with the opening ceremony not taking place until February 6.

As such, it will form a central strand of Olympic coverage in the UK, not least because it remains one of Team GB’s most realistic medal hopes.

British audiences still fondly remember Rhona Martin’s “Stone of Destiny” at the 2002 Games, and Eve Muirhead’s dominant gold-medal run in 2022.

Tom won’t be drawn on whether a repeat of either moment is on the cards.

But he is acutely aware of how much the Olympic spotlight matters for a sport that can otherwise drift out of view between Games.

“At the end of the day, the better it’s viewed on TV, the better it looks, the better the ice is, the better the play,” he says.

For UK audiences, Italy has one major advantage: a one-hour time difference with the UK.

The last three Winter Olympics were staged across far more challenging time zones, meaning many games were played overnight for British audiences — something Tom says “hasn’t been ideal” for the sport.

Italy’s more favourable time zone makes a big difference, he adds.

“Hopefully it will have a real impact. We want curling to thrive.”

From the Olympic ice to Curl Aberdeen

For Tom, the Olympic stage is only part of the picture.

In his other job, as general manager of Aberdeen curling rink Curl Aberdeen, he is equally focused on what happens after the cameras are switched off.

The venue plans to show every minute of the curling on a big screen in its lounge — a mark of just how important these Winter Games are to this corner of the Lang Stracht, and a reflection of the Granite City’s footprint at the elite end of the sport.

Robert Gordon University graduate Rebecca Morrison, who came up through Curl Aberdeen, is on the women’s team, while Curl Aberdeen chair Jackie Lockhart, who skipped the Great Britain women’s team at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, is providing commentary for the BBC.

“It’s a very Aberdeen Olympics,” laughs Layla Al-Saffar, Curl Aberdeen’s development and events manager.

And then there’s Tom — the sporting non-profit’s beating heart.

“He’s meticulous,” says Lianne McGregor, Curl Aberdeen’s administrative officer. “He’s a dot-the-i, cross-the-t kind of guy.”

Turning Olympic attention into lasting participation

Lianne says Tom’s attention to detail shaped the rink long before his current Olympic role came along.

The ice, she says, is so consistently prepared because of how particular he is about standards, a trait that helped push Curl Aberdeen onto the international stage.

Curl Aberdeen has hosted European and world championships, pre-Olympic qualifiers and international competitions featuring teams from across the globe.

Championship banners line one wall, marking world and European titles won by teams whose skips played out of Aberdeen.

Yet for all the elite success, the challenge now is making sure Olympic attention translates into something lasting.

“You get this flurry of interest,” Lianne says. “And then it all disappears.”

Layla, who oversees events and junior pathways at the rink, says the focus this season has been on creating more structured junior programmes to keep young players engaged.

The rink is also marking the Games with an Olympic Open Day, giving the public a chance to try curling for themselves as the competition unfolds in Italy.

‘Every ice rink in Scotland is under pressure’

In this Olympic cycle curling is not just looking for fresh talent; as costs rise at rinks across the country, attracting new members has become a matter of survival.

“Our biggest concern is energy costs,” Lianne says. “We’re a big freezer, and if those costs keep rising, it’s something you can’t ignore.”

She says Curl Aberdeen is fortunate to have additional facilities — including function rooms and lounge spaces — which can be hired out to help support the rink financially.

Even so, the need to tightly manage ice time to cover running costs remains a constant challenge, particularly at mixed-use rinks where skating and hockey help pay the bills.

In Cortina, Tom paints an even starker picture.

“Every ice rink in Scotland is under pressure,” he says, noting that ice rinks, along with swimming pools, have some of the biggest energy footprints in sport.

“We went from spending around £80,000 a year on utilities to an increase of about £70,000 in a single season.”

He says increases on that scale cannot simply be absorbed. “You have to pass it on,” he says. “And that has an impact on how often people play.”

Despite the pressure, Tom is confident the sport will endure.

He says Curl Aberdeen remains one of the most efficiently run rinks in the country, and that demand for the sport has not disappeared even if the landscape around it has changed.

“There’s a future,” Tom says. “We just need to work hard at it, and work even harder.”

Curling runs in the family

For now, Tom’s focus is on getting everything right in Cortina, with a little help from family.

His son, Ethan, is there, working on the ice crew and gaining experience behind the scenes. A curler in his own right, Ethan represented Team GB at the Winter Youth Olympics in South Korea in 2024.

His wife and daughter are due to arrive later, though Tom admits with a smile: “That’ll be more for a jolly.”

Hopes are that they may yet be on hand for another historic Team GB moment; one beamed into homes across the country and savoured back at Curl Aberdeen as another feather in the rink’s cap.

Tom’s own expectations, however, are more measured.

Asked what success at these Games would look like for him, he replies: “For curling to come out of it in as good a way as I possibly can. For everybody to be watching and thinking this is a fantastic sport.”

Then as the Wi-Fi splutters for the final time, and the call comes to an end, he adds:

“And if Team GB win, even better.”

[Source: Press and Journal]