A Frozen Spin on Target Practice

I flipped on the TV at one point over the weekend to take part in some channeling surfing. As usual, there wasn’t much on that seemed to hold my attention. So, I decided to see what Olympic events were happening at that point in time. As I searched the channels I came across a sport that managed to catch my attention. Curling is something I had never really given much thought to, but as I watched the match, I became very interested. I realized that, while the concept seemed very simple, there was a lot to scoring. It occurred to me that I knew virtually nothing about the sport of curling. So, I decided to take part in a round of Google searches to see what I could find out about this particular activity.

Thanks to the Vancouver 2010 games website, I found exactly what I was trying to find. It turns out that curling has been around for a very long time, over 500 years to be exact. The earliest records of the activity can found in Scotland. It wasn’t until 1924 that the sport was played at the Olympics, but wasn’t until 1998 that men and women both had events.

How do you play? Well, in the Olympic version, two teams compete with the goal of sliding a stone weighing 19.1 kilograms towards a group of circles. The object is to send the stone along the ice and stop it as close to the center of the circles as possible. Each game has ten ends in which the four member team throws (the term for sliding) a total of sixteen stones toward the rings at the opposite end of the ice. Each team member actually throws two stones a piece. As the stone slides, two members sweep in front of it to control its speed and direction. To win, a team must score the most points or have a higher number of stones near the center of the circles. You might be wondering where the term “curl” comes from. Well, as the stone travels down the ice, its direction is called its curl.

Here is a video if you’ve never seen curling before.


If you want to read more about Olympic Curling check the link below. You can also learn more about your favorite events from the Vancouver 2010 games.
http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-curling/