BEAVERTON, Ore. — When Lauren Rich first picked up a curling stone in 2018, she was just looking for something new to try after watching the Winter Olympics on TV. Seven years later, she’s headed to the Winter Games herself, not as an athlete, but as one of the few people in the world trusted to create Olympic-quality curling ice.

Rich, a Vancouver resident, will spend about a month in Italy in February, helping prepare and maintain the ice for every curling match at the 2026 Winter Olympics .

“It’s a lot of meticulous attention to detail,” Rich said. “You want to have a very flat pad. In a very controlled manner, we’ll pebble the ice, which is spraying water across the whole sheet, and that helps the stones go faster and further because there’s less friction and surface area between t

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