My day at the curling rink
Published 9:37 am Wednesday, February 24, 2010
It’s now 9:45 p.m. and I’ve been up for more than 19 hours straight. So yeah I’m a wee bit tired.
I woke up at 2:30 this morning to drive down the mountain and take my wife to the train station. After being detoured around B.C. Place, we finally made our way to the Pacific Central Station in the heart of Vancouver, B.C. After seeing my wife off on the train, I made tracks over to the Vancouver Olympic Centre to watch some women curlers.
I’ve always heard co-workers mock curling, so I was interested to check it out for myself. It’s the perfect kind of sport for Canada. It’s methodical game in which the tension builds throughout and ends with much hooting and hollering.
At first I was massively confused. With four games going at once it doesn’t make it easy for a beginner to pick up the action. A few local Canadians helped me understand the nuiances of the game. The best part of curling is the fan interaction. Fans from Canada, Great Britain, Sweden and Switzerland talk trash about poor draws and bad sweeping, and it’s all done in a respectful manner.
The easiest way to explain curling to an American is to relate it to sports popular in America. Curling has ends, like baseball has innings; throwers take off and throw the stone into a bunching of other stones not unlike bowling; throwers set up stones in front of the house called guards like an offensive line in football; curlers play the angles same as in billiards; stealing an end from a team with the hammer, or last stone, is akin to breaking serve in tennis; the team with the stone closest to the button wins just as those closes to the stick win in bocce ball. OK maybe that last one is an Italian game, but you get the point.
The U.S. lost to China, which I thought at first was an upset until Bob Rempel, of Surrey, B.C, explained that China is the defending world champions. All of the Chinese players live in B.C. and have a Canadian coach, not unlike some of the other teams.
All right I’m off to bed, we’ll see what tomorrow offers. If the snow keeps falling, I think Lindsey Vonn will have to wait another day to see if she can pick up her third medal.
