When you put a downhome spin on an Olympic sport, you're bound to change the lingo a bit. Consider this description of skillet curling, a twist on traditional curling.
"You throw the bacon, and then throw the skillet kind of like you're bowling, trying to get closest to the bacon," explains Emily Rasmussen. She was part of one of the 32 teams that competed in the Skillet Curling Championship in Chattanooga, Tenn., over the weekend.
Instead of the stationary bullseye that is the target for regular curlers, in this niche sport, the "bacon" is the players' target — a grill press, to keep it culinary — that is hurled down the ice before each round. Then teams take turns launching iron skillets in hopes of getting them bacon-adjacent, and also blocking the other team's skillets.
That might seem a bit technical, but the Chattanooga tournament, which started in 2019 and is one of a handful of similar events in the U.S., is a charity event that aims to combine "equal parts skill, luck, and hilarity."
"It's like a Mardi Gras sport, in a way," says competitor Alvaro Victoria. "It's flamboyant, it's fun, it's social."
Throwing turtles, in hopes of a stovetop
Scoring is similar to traditional curling, which awards points at the end of each round for stones that remain closer to the target than any opposing pieces. In skillet curling, a team scoring four points – the maximum possible in each round – is a "stovetop."
Skillet curling is a bit like bocce on ice, Rasmussen says. But while it might seem inelegant to yeet iron skillets across an ice rink, the sport does involve technique.
Traditional curling has won fans with intense athletes who famously get very low and slide themselves forward before releasing a stone. Most skillet curlers simply stoop a bit before sending a frying pan clattering onto the ice.
Even so, there are different ways to throw the skillet, says Phil Harris, the tournament's executive director who also competes. Some players crouch; others get on their hands and knees. The skillet can be deployed right-side up, or upside down — called a "turtle," for its domed appearance.
"People will throw turtles a lot if there's a lot of skillets around the bacon," Harris says, "if they really want to move a lot of stuff out of the way."
A loose atmosphere, to benefit charity
What it lacks in history and international recognition, skillet curling makes up for in enthusiasm and creativity. Most teams wear coordinated costumes; names include the Wu-Tang Pans; Natural Born Curlers; Cornbread & Butterbeans; Curling Irons; Rock, Paper, Skillets; and Krakens Kilts.
Victoria is the captain of Los Guapos, named after the villain in the movie Three Amigos!. When asked about the captain's duties on game day, he says it's pretty simple.
"I mean, basically, encourage my team to drink heavily before we play."
But, Victoria adds, captains also pump up competitors and fans and lead fundraising efforts.
It's free to attend the three-day competition, which concluded Sunday. Still, the event raises thousands of dollars — from team fundraising, along with beer and concession sales — in donations to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, which serves 20 counties. As of Monday morning, organizers had raised $90,000 toward their $100,000 goal for this year's event.
The challenges of extreme weather, imperfect ice
The Chattanooga tournament has grown quickly, Harris says. At that first tourney in 2019, eight teams threw skillets on an outdoor rink. Now, 32 teams compete under a covered pavilion.
Its sponsors include the cookware company Lodge Cast Iron, based in nearby South Pittsburg. Some Lodge employees, such as Rasmussen, also compete, but the most important thing the company supplies are the curling skillets, which are drawn from factory seconds.
Harris says he asked for about 200 skillets for the 2026 tournament, a number that includes dozens of replacements. "A four-hour session will break 8 to 12 skillets," he says.
Pans are more likely to break in extreme cold. And for most of this weekend, match-time temperatures were in the teens and 20s.
"Everyone has to think about how the cold is going to affect the ice and their throws," says April Watson, who competes on The Breakfast Club. "The ice is very slippery. You're really just out there trying not to fall while you're playing."
The surface can also vary thanks to skating sessions that leave the rink frosted with small chunks of ice.
"You never know if the skillet is going to slide straight or veer off course, and you're just hoping and praying that the other team doesn't knock your skillet off the bacon," Watson says.
While Olympic curling evokes scenes of athletes furiously scrubbing the ice with brooms to affect a stone's trajectory, this version also has brooms — but they're standard hardware store sweepers.
"I do bring two brooms out," Harris says. "They don't do anything other than give the team something to hold, and make them feel like they're doing something."
A sport that's "completely meaningless" — but fun
Chattanooga, Tenn., is far from curling's roots in Scotland, where granite stones are quarried for Olympic athletes to send spinning toward an icy bull's-eye. But skillet curlers say they're fans of both sports.
In fact, Victoria says that years ago, he looked into the possibility of forming an Olympic curling team representing his native Mexico, along the lines of the Jamaican bobsled team. That effort didn't go anywhere — but, he says, skillet curling has panned out in a different way.
"It is completely meaningless, as far as the sport itself," Victoria says. "But just being out there, as silly as it sounds, on the ice with friends, having a couple of drinks and doing it for a good cause, it's nice."
This year's edition ended with a nail-biting finish between two perennial contenders, as the Heavy Stones battled the Kraken's Kilts.
Sunday's dramatic final crowned the Heavy Stones for a fifth time in Chattanooga, but the festivities aren't quite over. Teams will reconvene later this week for a taco bar dinner, a concert and an awards ceremony for top performers and fundraisers, and best costumes. By then, the curling competition will be underway at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
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