Latinx curlers find a home on ice and push for their Olympic moments
José Sepúlveda believes dreams don't have to end when you wake up.
"My dream," he said "was to be an Olympian. To compete for Puerto Rico."
He tried fencing, then gymnastics. But he kept waking to the same reality.
"I was not good. I couldn't make it," he said. "But I still hold the dream of representing Puerto Rico."
He eventually decided the problem wasn't with the dream, it was with the sport. That's when he discovered curling, the Winter Olympics competition that is part shuffleboard, part light housekeeping played on a sheet of ice.
"I was in a bar and I saw curling. I felt, 'You know what? Maybe I can do this. Let me give it a try,' " remembered Sepúlveda, a 53-year-old audio-video engineer.
"Maybe you believe that maybe I am too old for this. You know what? I can do this. No matter how old I am."
He's not the only one who feels that way. On many evenings at the San Francisco Bay Area Curling Club, the
