He was Lag Niklas Edin’s first coach. When Sören Grahn prepares for his seventh Winter Olympics, a heavy responsibility rests on his shoulders. The Swede is the coach of the Italian curling team in mixed doubles, Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner, who are reigning Olympic champions from Beijing and also took World Cup gold in Canada last year.
They won both tournaments without losing a single match. This means that the curling duo ranks as one of the home nation’s biggest gold hopes in Milano Cortina.
– They have never lost, says Grahn, the Värmlander who devoted large parts of his life to the sport of curling.
He started playing in 1976 and the following year he saw Ragnar Kamp’s team win EC gold at home in Karlstad and was hooked.
There were two Olympics as a player, when curling was an exhibition sport. As a coach, he lured a young Niklas Edin to Karlstad to start what became one of the world’s best curling teams of all time. Grahn saw something big in Edin early on.
– Niklas has always been a guy who is very willing to exercise. When he moved to Karlstad, it was to make a serious investment and play curling full time, he says.
But Sören Grahn eventually left Swedish curling and it was other countries such as Scotland, Italy and Russia that benefited from his skills. Before the Olympics in Beijing 2022, he was hired by China to, together with the Swedish world champion Peter “Peja” Lindholm, create Chinese success in the home Olympics, but he ended up going home a few months before the opening. He says that in the end there was too much political interference.
– They questioned everything we did and did their best to destroy us, he says.
Two years ago he received a request if he wanted to return to the Italian national team and take care of the mixed doubles duo and the women’s team before the Olympics. Since then he has again been on the road for much of the year with a base in a hotel room in the village of Cembra, twelve miles from Cortina, and a center of Italian curling.
Grahn says he has long been concerned about the curling events at the Olympics, which are played in the same but remodeled arena used in the 1956 Olympics.
– When I heard that they were going to use the old wooden building, I thought that this will never work. But last year the Junior WC was held here and the conditions were perfect. It will be good, he says.
Even better from an Italian point of view, it will be if Constantini and Mosaner live up to high expectations. The duo is seen as a perfect combination in mixed doubles, where the tall Mosaner is one of the world’s best sweepers and Constantini is known for his precise moves.
Mixed doubles is the first sport to be competed in during the Olympics and the tournament starts already two days before the opening, when the Swedish siblings Isabella and Rasmus Wranå face South Korea.
Constantini/Mosaner start the game on the first day following. The pair have also made a name for themselves by competing sparingly. Grahn’s idea was that the Italians would warm up before the Olympics with the international tournament in Gothenburg in the intervening days, but that did not happen.
– I wanted them to play, but it is quite tight for both teams and it was difficult to get a mixed team into the program, says Grahn, who turned 64 in December and believes that his seventh Olympics as a coach will be his last.
After 50 years with the whole world as his field of work, he intends to return to the house in Rönnäshytta, a village outside Askersund with approximately 140 inhabitants.
– I’ve had the best job in the world, he says.
Read more:
Milan Cortina Olympics – day by day schedule
