Another Olympics Update: This Curling Thing

First. No curling irons are involved. They use something called “stones’ (not testicles so don’t worry).
Second. C’mon. This is shuffleboard on ice. That’s it. Why don’t they just call it that? Oh. Because it’s the Olympics and we need to call it something cooler. Ok. It’s Curling. And last week Curling sprinted into the forefront of the Olympics – Canada tops Norway in curling crowd-pleaser at Winter Olympics.

As you can see below this is a serious sport (but the humongous green circles on the ice are a little disconcerting). In this match “there were some dicey moments en route to the victory.” (not my words .. I believe it was the Vancouver Times). In a fascinating match the Canadians raced (I use that term quite loosely … think snails at their fastest) to a 5-1 lead through four ends (ends are simply when they have all their rocks together at one end … ok … stop laughing). I believe they have 10 ends in a match.

Oh. Please let this post end … why did I start this?

Canada's skip Kevin Martin (C) aims his rock before releasing it as third Marc Kennedy (L) and fourth Ben Hebert wait to sweep during their men's round robin curling game against Norway February 16.

They use terms like ‘skip’ (I have no clue what it means) and there are two sweepers with brooms on each side of the smooth granite stone as it slides, vibrating the ice as it slides down the lane. The strategy is to knock the opponent’s stone out of the scoring area. The goal is to get the stone closest to the center of the target called the house.

Only fans with stones show up to cheer.

Oh.

Let me take that back.

Some of the contestants have to have stones to wear uniforms like this:

Team Norway's Haavard Vad Petersson (left/lead) and Torger Nergaard (right/third) sweep a rock during Men's Olympic curling action against Team Canada at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver February 16.

Written by Bruce