Curling a lifelong pursuit for U.S. Olympian Persinger

The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing get underway Wednesday, Feb. 2, with curling, a sport one might say got Vicky Persinger’s life underway.

Indeed, the two-time U.S. women’s national champion has been curling since the age of 5, in a family that also includes fellow curlers in sister Tina and cousins Chad and Greg, the latter a two-time U.S. men’s champ. All four, in fact, competed in the 2015 Mixed Curling Championship and finished fourth.

These Olympics may be the first for Persinger but the 29-year-old native of Fairbanks, Alaska, is no stranger to the curling wars. She’s competed in eight Junior Championships, winning gold in her last appearance in 2013.

Since then, she’s taken home hardware in every Women’s National Championship she has competed in, seven in a row as of 2021, and she’s won gold medals in 2017, 2018 and 2021.

She and Chris Plys punched their ticket to Beijing with victories in the U.S. Olympic Mixed Trials in November in Chaska, Minn., and another qualifying event in December at Leeuwarden, Netherlands, where they ran the table with seven wins in a row.

In China, she and mixed partner Plys come in on a tear and figure to be a podium threat. She’ll also be on the U.S. women’s team.

Viewers can catch Persinger when she and Plys open things up with a round-robin match against Australia on Wednesday. Mixed doubles culminates on Feb. 8, with the gold medal game. Men’s and women’s curling runs through Feb. 19.

All competition in the 2022 Winter Olympics airs on NBC, Peacock, USA Network, CNBC, NBCOlympics.com and NBC Sports app.