Albuquerque couple brings expert curling analysis to NBC’s Olympics coverage

Albuquerque not being the curling capital of the world, Derek Surka and Charrissa Lin have turned to other athletic pursuits since moving to the Duke City in 2013: marathons, Ironman triathlons, etc. 

Yet, the married couple’s decades-long connection to curling, their expertise in the sport and their love for it, flow (or, if you prefer, slide) unabated. 

For Surka, the ongoing Milano Cortina Olympics are the fifth Winter Games during which he’s worked as a statistician — helping NBC broadcast crews describe what’s happening on the ice during curling competitions. 

For Lin, it’s her fourth. 

“We’re curling statisticians,” Surka said by phone from NBC Sports Headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, where he and Lin are based during the Games. “That’s our official title. We basically help prep the announcers before the games by providing them with some information about the teams.

“Then … we provide interesting tidbits of information and answer any questions they have as the games go on.”

Lin and Surka are neither seen nor heard during the telecasts, but their role is nevertheless essential in covering a sport that few viewers (and perhaps the announcers) truly understand as do Surka and Lin, longtime, successful former curlers.

As the competition begins, Lin said, “The kind of information we provide is more like historical information about the teams, what’s interesting about them, like, this team has played together for how long. … As the round-robin goes on it’s more tournament-specific statistics.” 

Surka has been handling those duties since the 2010 Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Lin since 2014 in Sochi, Russia. But they go much farther back with the sport than that, Surka especially. 

In Welland, Ontario, where he grew up, Surka played baseball and hockey while excelling at math. He took up curling in high school, but left the sport behind when he came to the United States to study aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

There he met Lin, who’d grown up outside Allentown, Pennsylvania with similar academic inclinations and brilliance.

“We worked with the same advisor (at MIT),” she said. 

Lin knew nothing about curling when they met and in fact said she didn’t know Surka had ever played until they were engaged. 

Curling didn’t re-enter the picture until the couple moved to the Washington, D.C. area and (of all places) found a curling community there. Lin started playing, and excelling, and soon she and Surka were competing throughout the Midwest and into Canada. 

In 2013, the same year they moved to Albuquerque — Surka, now retired, to work at the Air Force Research Lab at Kirtland — they and two teammates won a mixed-team national title.

“We went to nationals seven times (between 2003-13),” Surka said. “We had a few bronze medals and finally got a gold.”

Typically, Surka played the “skip” position, the team captain. Lin played third, or vice-skip.

Three years before that gold medal, before the Vancouver games, Surka had been helping the United States Curling Association establish a presence online. 

“NBC was looking for a stats person to help their announcers,” he said. 

Surka got the job. Lin accompanied him to Vancouver, though she wasn’t involved in NBC’s coverage 

Four years later, Surka was headed for Sochi — but because it was Russia, it didn’t appear likely that Lin could go along in any non-professional capacity. 

Then, Lin said, “(The NBC person in charge) said, ‘We actually have a position for you, if you’d like to come.’”

Neither Lin nor Surka traveled to Pyeongchang, South Korea (2018) or Beijing (2022), and it was understood from the start that they wouldn’t be going to Italy for the 2026 Games but would be working remotely from Connecticut. Most of, if not all, the announcers they’re assisting are also working from Stamford.

Because of the six-hour difference between Stamford and Cortina d’Ampezzo, that can mean getting up in time for the 3 a.m. Eastern start of a match. Still, they said, the 2026 Games have been less demanding than those in the past.

“They use curling to fill in the gaps a lot, like when there are weather delays in other events and they need a curling game to fill in,” Lin said. Curling and hockey are the only sports in which there’s competition every single day during the Games. 

“Because the weather has been pretty consistent, I guess, in Italy,” she said, “we haven’t had to do as much …. It’s work, but it’s been the most relaxed I’ve been in an Olympiad, for sure.”

Once the Games are over, Surka will be heading home — not home to Albuquerque but home to Welland for a curling holiday.

“I curl once a year,” he said. “After the Olympics, I’m going back to my hometown, curling with some friends from high school.”

Lin, who’s also retired, most recently as a vice president of data and analytics at Presbyterian Hospital, will return to Albuquerque and will skip the Welland trip. “Usually there’s a fair amount of carousing and drinking,” she said, “and I don’t need to be there for that.” 

Still, there are marathons and triathlons to train for — not to mention research for the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.