Mari Motohashi

Curling looks calm from the outside, which is exactly why I find Mari Motohashi's career so interesting. Born in Kitami, Hokkaido in 1986, she won a bronze medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics as the alternate on the team skipped by Satsuki Fujisawa. People tend to skim past the word alternate, but it may be the hardest job on any roster. You prepare exactly as hard as everyone else, you carry the same nerves, and you may never throw a stone. Doing that at an Olympics, and doing it for a team that medals, requires a kind of ego management most athletes never have to learn. What I respect even more is what came after. She didn't treat the medal as a finish line. She came back to compete in 2020 and kept playing until she paused her playing career in August 2024. Plenty of athletes retire on a high note. Going back onto the ice, year after year, in a sport built on patience, says she is there for the game itself.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Mari Motohashi

Name (Japanese)

本橋麻里

Reading

もとはし まり

Born

June 10, 1986 (age 40)

Origin

Kitami, Hokkaidō, Japan

Height

160 cm

Occupation

curler

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Tiger

University

Aomori Akenohoshi Junior College

• Xhttps://x.com/MariMotohashi1
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari%20Motohashi
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%AC%E6%A9%8B%E9%BA%BB%E9%87%8C
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q457619

Tags

• Hokkaidō
• curler

Last updated

September 29, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.