Every few years, my family suffers.
You see, I'm a hopeless Olympics freak. Ever since the 1984 games in Los Angeles and Sarajevo, I've been pulled in by the pageantry, the color, and the ideals of "Faster, Stronger, Higher." And so in the summer in American presidential election years, I enjoy the track and the archery and goleor of other sports that are played in the warmer times....
But it's the Winter Games, now shifted to the even off-years, that I look for the most. (Well, what do you expect?? Look right to the Sidebar and read my profile for oncet!) My most memorable Games were not Los Angeles, or Seoul or Barcelona, but Calgary in 1988, Lillehammer and Nagano and Albertville, Salt Lake City...and, this year, Torino (or Turin, if you're of that preference). Curiously, though, it's not the traditional skiing and figure skating that really capture my attention; it is the more unorthodox events, such as ski jumping, luge, bobsled and biathlon. Just this year in Turin, I discovered a new sport, snowboard cross, or SBX, in which four lunatics shred a course in each heat, trying to prove who's the more suicidal
[1].
But I think the sport I look forward to most now is...
curling.
And some hopeless unenlightened fellow countrymen are now surely saying, "
Curling? A two-hour game that moves slow enough for moss to take root on the ice? People throwing chunks of granite around and sweeping ice in some frigid kind of winter-bound shuffleboard? You've gotta be kidding! I'd rather watch the hair on my knuckles grow."
Your loss, my friend. Curling does rather resemble shuffleboard on ice; but it has all the strategy of chess, along with the element of luck that makes a game exciting. Sometimes you throw that stone perfectly, or hit another one down in the house, and a speck of dirt or an imperfection in the ice late in a game will make things move in seeming contradiction to Newtonian physics (Einstein and relativity doesn't apply in this case)
[2]. The game
is slow-scoring, and most Americans prefer something more vigorous when it comes to piling up points, such as tennis or basketball...or, God help us, what we Americans call "football"
[3]. But the excitement comes from that as well, fighting to gain the advantage and hold or improve your score. And the interesting thing is that, since curling was made a full Olympic sport at Nagano1998, and even more after Salt Lake in 2002, American interest in curling has been growing beyond the narrow band of northern states such as Minnesota where it's been popular as a winter activity for years
[4].
For the unwashed...uh, the newcomer to the sport, I direct you to the
Wikipedia articles, including a glossary, as well as an
animated Flash demonstration by Reuters at the Yahoo Olympic coverage site (possibly best in Internet Explorer, unfortunately; it seemed to have a problem in my copy of Firefox). An excellent discussion of the rules and strategy, along with good animations, is at
Curling Basics. For a quick taste, though, curling is played on a long sheet of ice with two "targets," one at each end. The target is called the
house, and is where the scoring is done during the ten rounds, or "ends," of play. Only one side can score in an end, and the score is determined by who is closer to the center of the house (the button) with as many of their stones or rocks (take your pick) before finding an opponent's stone. And what you're heaving at the button
is a stone; a shaped 44-pound chunk of Scotch or Welsh granite (preferred) with a handle attached that allows you to aim and place spin on the stone itself. Four-person teams take alternating turns during each end, each person allowed to throw two stones apiece. You either aim for best location, to set up a "guard" in front of your own stones, or to hit (peel) the opponents' stones and knock them further away from the button -- preferably out of the house completely, unless you want them to be guarding your own rock. Rules set up in recent years prevent the game from becoming a simple knockout contest by requiring all rocks guarding the front outside of the house to stay in play until at least four stones are thrown; this increases the strategy factor. Logically enough, the higher score at the end of ten ends wins the game; if a tie, further ends are played to break it. A complete side must be played in 72 minutes, exclusive of overtime, with two time-outs allowed.
Oh, and what are the brooms for? By sweeping the ice in front of the stone as it curls down its path, you can affect the trajectory, either straightening it along a chosen line or helping it to curl more in the chosen route. Below the tee line that crosses the center of the button, you can also sweep an opposing rock after yours hits it, trying to guide it further away from the center and improve your own scoring. You see? There's a purpose here!
So how is USA doing so far? Very well on the men's side; in the preliminary round-robin, our team is hanging on to a chunk of third place (along with Finland and Switzerland) and has some hopes to advance to the medal round. In their most recent game written up at Yahoo Sports Olympics, the men defeated Sweden nicely, by 10-6; SWE was also dismissed by FIN yesterday afternoon. Canada, not surprisingly, is in first place (tied with Great Britain). As there are clutches of win-loss ties, it may come down to tiebreaker rules or playoff rounds to determine who advances in the end. On the women's side, though, USA is sucking ice. As I was writing this, we just lost a heartbreaker to Russia, 8-7 in 11 ends after a clawback to tie in regulation. I'm no expert, but the NBC commentators say it seems to be a combination of ice wear, bad weight judgments in throwing, and a lack of aggressive play on the women's part. USA Women hold last place on the chart, and I think this RUS game put us out of the competition. Watch the women to keep watching curling, then, but if all you're interested in is medals, keep your eye on the men's side.
I gotta say it: we shall soon find out if the USA men have the stones....
[5]Supplemental:It appears the Harper
isn't the only blogger interested in curling....
[1] Actually, SBX is not quite
that insane; but the chance for pileups is substantial on a course that would give a luge or skeleton sleigher motion sickness, and it
has been compared to NASCAR on snow. For the record, USA took the men's gold medal just yesterday.
[2] Makes you wonder if sometimes the stones have been talking to Stephen Hawking. (Hawking guest-appearing as a hologram of himself on Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Wrong again, Albert!")
[3] I'm sorry; I believe that (a) football should actually be played with the
feet; and (b) a ball should actually roll like a ball, not wobble like a Weeble. And before you start calling me an Alabamian apostate, go read that profile again.
[4] According to
Wikipedia, curling has long been an established sport in Canada, where national championships and prize matches are popular alongside hockey. Many European countries also play a good game (a surprising amount of popularity in Italy during these Games), and it has spread to the Far East as well (probably, at a guess, following Nagano in 1998).
[5] Actually, Kitt gets revenge for all the Winter Games watching; she locks onto the swimming during the Summer Games...especially the men. Native Floridian, remember; she says herself that she considers ice an unnatural form of matter, unless it's cooling off a glass of tea. (I think the Inventor of ice may have something to say about that.)
Peace be to you.
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