Winter Olympics: Break out the brooms
I love curling.
And no, not the kind that involves hair.
I’m talking about the sport that is a little bit like shuffleboard on ice. There are brooms and rocks and strategies and rules that frankly I don’t quite understand. But that’s OK. Every four years, I get to watch teams from Canada and Norway and Japan and the United States duke it out in curling.
Yep, it’s time for the Winter Olympics.
Curling and biathlon and skeleton and luge and a bunch of other sports that most of us in Oklahoma don’t quite understand are about to take center stage. Oklahomans are known for their high TV viewing numbers during the Olympics, both summer and winter, so for the next couple weeks, we’ll be watching triple toe loops in figure skating and backside airs in snowboarding.
The truth is, the Winter Olympics are a little bit like Australian rules football for us. We don’t quite know what the heck it is that we’re watching. But when it comes to the Winter Olympics, we’ll be watching.
And I think it’s a ton of fun. The Winter Olympics are a change of pace, something that is completely and totally different from just about everything we know and love in the sports world in our fair state. In no sport is that more evident than curling.
The participants use large, smooth stones with handles on them, sliding them down the ice with very precise timing and spin. Then, as they approach the target at the end of the sheet, teammates use brooms and brushes to help the stone into place on a giant bull’s eye target. The team with a stone closest to the center at the completion of an end, which is sort of like an inning, gets a point. And the team with the most points wins.
Or at least, I think that’s how it works.
The scoring is a bit of a mystery to me. So is the strategy. But like the rest of the Winter Olympics, it’s something different from our normal sports diet.
The curling competition opens Tuesday. I’ll be watching.
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Comments
Hey, Troy, thanks for setting us straight on the scoring. I suspected there’d be something that I wouldn’t get quite right. Doesn’t change the fact that I totally dig the sport. By the way, just saw an ad for curling; super exciting. — Jenni
As far as I’ve seen, every USA game is on either USA, MSNBC or CNBC. So you should get plenty of opportunity to watch and learn more!
We watch every game (regardless of which country is playing) on AFN (Armed Forces Network) here in Baghdad. We are addicted to curling!!!!
The team with the rock closest to the center, or “button” gets a point for each rock that is closer than their opponents closest rock. The team that scored in the end shoots first in the next end, giving last rock advantage, or “hammer” to the opponent. Teams will use rocks to guard their own or take out opponents.