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[sundubuman]

[mindmetoo]

[EFLtrainer]

[sundubuman]

is not.

Curling is just about the coolest sport on earth. In no other sport are all the team members intricately responsible for the outcome of every shot.

it is the ultimate game of strategy and teamwork. and if you have never curled a full round-robin tournament, you have no idea how physical this game is, especially for the non-skips.

[sundubuman]

dble post

[sundubuman]

triple post, woops

[Bulsajo]

I'm not big on sports but I find curling to be no less a sport than golf, so IMO anyone who considers golf a sport but not curling is a hypocrite.

As for why there is curling in the olympics but not golf, it beats me.

[sundubuman]

some call curling Team Golf....

for what it is worth.

The Olympics needs something like curling, a TEAM sport, civilized, with no need for officiating (except for the hog line rule), and intensely dramatic once you know what's happening.

I have always made the analogy that those who make fun of curling, are pretty much akin to children making fun of sex.

[sundubuman]

Curling Craze Sweeps Up New Following In The U.S.
By Katie Zezima
The New York Times
Published: Monday, February 27, 2006

WAYLAND, Mass. - For the past two weeks, Matt Durso's life has revolved around curling, an Olympic sport that he had never played and, to be honest, did not fully understand.

To better grasp the game, Durso, 22, a student at Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, Vt., and two friends woke up early Saturday morning and drove 3 1/2 hours to Broomstones, a curling club in this town 18 miles west of Boston, to attend a learn-to-curl open house.

``I've been watching every match every day,'' Durso said. ``I've been obsessed.''

And so, it seems, have millions of other people around the country who are becoming entranced by a sport many liken to shuffleboard on ice.

The U.S. Curling Association's Web site crashed on Feb. 16, when it received 12.5 million hits. The association said dozens of clubs around the country held open houses this month, capitalizing on the Olympic coverage, and many drew record turnouts.
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The president of the Ardsley Curling Club in Ardsley-on-Hudson, N.Y., said traffic on the club's Web site had tripled in recent weeks and the club was busy booking corporate events and parties.

In Los Angeles, more than 120 people have signed up in the past week for an Internet mailing list about starting a curling club.

Here at Broomstones, more than 1,000 aspiring curlers showed up for the five-hour open house, some waiting outside for more than an hour in snow and temperatures in the 20s.

``There's a lot of buzz out there,'' said Dan Williams, the club's president.

Much of that stems from increased broadcast time thanks to the sport's popularity in the 2002 Salt Lake City games.

This year, NBC broadcast 26 Olympic curling matches. Through Thursday, 37 million viewers had watched curling, the network said. That number does not include the men's gold medal match or the bronze medal match, which the United States team won.

[sundubuman]

and from Italy, where curling drew bigger audiences than even figure skating, (a country that has only a few curling clubs btw)


XX OLYMPIC WINTER GANES: TORINO 2006: Curling: for Italy Love at First Sight

/noticias.info/ And who could have expected a success of such proportions for curling during these Olympics. The interest has bewildered everyone. The TV schedules had to undergo a sudden re-programming proposing the curling images during prime-time: Italy absolutely did not want to miss out on it. The editorial staff of the newspapers were panicking for having to write about curling on request of the directors without having an in-depth knowledge of the subject.

From this experience the humblest and most talented journalist will have something to learn from it. In fact there are no ridiculous or minor sports but often only disciplines that one ignores. But what did these Olympic Winter Games mean for curling? Surely a great opportunity to see at home that fantastic generation of athletes making the history of these last twenty years in world curling. During future Olympic Winter Games there will not be the chance of seeing the inventions of the Norwegian Dordi Nordby and the creativity of the English Rhona Martin, just as Dorthhe Holm��s at the lead of the young Danish team.

For the men all the great feats of the Finn Markku Uusipaavalniemi, of the Norwegian Pal Trulsen and of David Murdoch from Great Britain will be missed. Italy discovered these great curlers late, but cheered and admired them. It would be nice to see them also at the next Canadian Olympic Winter Games but for them it��s always more difficult to blow out the candles on the birthday cake. In Torino 2006 the big of the curling will bid farewell to the audience. They close their career but brought to an end a mission that seems to be incredible. Italy is in love with curling and it was love at first sight.

Renato Negro

[sundubuman]

and from the states

Curling peaks curiosity and interest
By Mike Givler
Daily News Sports Editor
Lebanon Daily News

PAOLI — It happened four years ago this month.

I was surfing around the several NBC channels that were carrying coverage of the 2002 Salt Late Winter Olympics, and I stumbled upon it.

��It�� was curling.

Like most Americans, I didn��t know what I was watching at first. And it took either a commentator or a television graphic to alert me that it was indeed the sport of curling.

Like seeing a car accident, I felt I wanted to turn away, or in this case change the channel to something else, but I couldn��t. ��What were they doing with those brooms and that thing called a stone on that sheet of ice?�� I asked myself.

I didn��t have an answer. But I was drawn into it, and I soon found myself checking the TV guide to see when curling was going to be on again.

As I watched more and more of it, I soon realized it was a lot like deck shuffleboard, something I had grown up around since that triangular court was drawn into the tiles of my basement floor. It was similar in that one team was trying to knock the other team��s stones out of the scoring area and that sending shots short of the target in order to protect your points was part of the game.

But what was with the brooms? Were they trying to slow the rocks down or speed them up? Did the sweeping actually help the stones move, or ��curl,�� as they moved down the ice?

Eventually, the more I watched, the more I understood about the game. Sweeping makes the rock go farther and straighter because the friction from the speed of the brush slightly melts the ice and allows the rock to hydroplane and travel farther.

The bottom of the rock is not flat, but in fact concave, or curved inward, which when the rock is spun slightly, makes it curl down the ice. A fast-moving stone will not curl as much.

I had been sucked in. And then it was over.

The Olympics ended, and soon the curiosity of curling that was inside me disappeared as well.

After all, it��s not like you can find curling on the channels around here. This isn��t Canada, where curling is almost as big as hockey. (More than 94 percent of the world��s curlers live above the border, which equals over 1 million enthusiasts and 29 world championships.)

Then along came Turin. It was back. But with the Italian city being six hours ahead of us, it meant curling would be on in the morning and early afternoon hours over here in the States, when I��m working, and would receive virtually no prime-time airing in the evening.

However, with my early-morning hours part of the job at the Daily News, it allowed me to click on the TV in the office and catch some glimpses of the drama as it unfolded. (I am the sports editor. It is my job to follow sports, right?)

But I knew, like four years ago, it would soon be gone. I needed to take my enthusiasm to the next level. And then I heard about the Philadelphia Curling Club.

Located in Paoli, it was having an open house Saturday and was allowing people to get an up-close look at the sport. I had to go.

I didn��t know what to expect, but I didn��t expect what I found. When I arrived 15 minutes after the doors opened, there was already a line out the door. In the 15 minutes it took my group to get inside, the line had doubled and was, appropriately enough, curling around the side of the building.

Inside, the line continued through the club, stopping at stations where waivers were signed (we were untrained people on ice) and shoes were taped in order to create a ��sliding�� foot.

Once on one of the two ice sheets in the building, we were taught how to slide and how to sweep. We learned the ice is sprayed with fine droplets of water, creating ��pebble,�� or bumps, on the surface that help the stone curl. The amount of curl changes during the game as the pebble wears out.

Eye-opening, to say the least. As it was for the club, which had people lining up an hour and 15 minutes before opening and an estimated 1,000 people turning out, something it wasn��t prepared for since the last open house generated only 300 fans of the sport.

Blame the U.S. men��s squad for that, which earned a bronze in Turin last week, the first medal by an American team in the sport.

Obviously, it��s not just me who��s catching curling fever. And I��m probably not the only one who is anxiously awaiting Vancouver and 2010.

[sundubuman]

This sort of thing has happened at virtually every curling club in the US. I can only imagine what will happen in 4 years, in Vancouver, if the United States manages to challenge Canada for a gold medal. Hockey could NEVER compete.

You haven't seen nothing yet, curling virgins.

[Hollywoodaction]

[Bulsajo]

[Hollywoodaction]