March 2, 2010--I Miss My Curling

Now that the winter Olympics have concluded, I am finding that more than anything else I miss the curling.

When I first tuned in, the sport, the game--whatever it is--looked to me like a souped-up version of shuffleboard. And since I am spending the winter in South Florida, anything resembling shuffleboard or dinner before 5:30 is not a good thing.

If you failed to watch any, curling involves teams of four players each who spend their time sliding polished thick 38 to 44-pound disks of granite along a "sheet" (which is what it's called) about the size of a bowling alley made of smooth ice toward a bulls-eye-like target, a 12-foot diameter series of four concentric circles--the "house" is what it is called. Each side "delivers" (that's what it's called) a total of eight "rocks" (that's what they are called) toward the center of the house, the "button" (which is what it is called). After all are delivered, the team with the rock closest to the button scores points.

At first, though intrigued, I did not know any of the nomenclature, how it was determined if the winning team scored one or two or more points, or what the "hammer" was that the announcers were making such a big deal about. (It's the last of the total of 16 rocks delivered and gives the team that has and delivers it a decided scoring advantage). I also had no idea what "ends" were (apparently they are like baseball innings or bowling frames) nor how many of them constituted a full game (10, plus extra ends, again like baseball, if the score is tied after 10).

More than anything else I had no idea what all the frantic brushing was about, an energetic, strangely domestic-seeming activity fastidiously carried out by at least two team members who clear the path of "pebbles" (water beads on the ice) toward the button ahead of the slowing curling rock. Curling, get it? Hence the name of the game. And a game it is as well as a sport.

The curling, or slow spin imparted to the rock by the deliverer is not for aesthetics. As I found myself getting more and more drawn into the sport ("addicted" is only a slightly exaggerated way of describing my condition--I confess to spending hours every day transfixed in front of the TV screen), I realized that the spin, or curl, enables it to trace a curved path along the ice and thus, if done with great skill--and this includes the brushing--causes it to thread its way toward the center of the house by skirting around other rocks already delivered that remain on the ice and block access to the button.

By the second week of my curling obsession I began to understand some of the strategy and subtler techniques. I even heard curling compared to chess: a team knowing it has the hammer (or doesn't), knowing they and their opponents have eight rocks each in an end, anticipating how two or three or even four rocks ahead might be delivered, deliver their own in a pattern and "weight" (speed) that takes these possibilities into consideration.

And this strategy very much includes directing one's rocks toward those of the other team where, forgive me, shuffleboard-like, a carefully-delivered rock is able to knock an opponent's away from the button via a basic law of physics--the law of equal-and-opposite reaction where an opponent's rock or two or even three, in a sort of chain reaction, is blasted away and yours, stopped short in its track by the collision because or the transfer of momentum from your rock to theirs, remains where it took place close to the button. These double- or triple- "take-outs" as they are called are, well, magnificent.

And they are as exciting to a curling-crazed fan such as I now am as the four-man bobsled, the downhill, the half-pipe, hockey, the luge, Nordic combined, or the skeleton (don't ask).

I even did a little reading about the history of curling; and the old English Lit major in me loved learning that it originated in Scotland in the mid 16th century and that at first it involved sliding naturally-formed river rocks across the many frozen lochs and ponds of the late Middle Ages. I even learned that the best granite for fabricating rocks, ailsite granite, continues to be Scottish, from Ailsa Craig off the Ayshire coast, but that environmental concerns have nearly halted its quarrying. This so upset me that I am considering giving up my membership in the Sierra Club.

But there was one little hiccup, admittedly a silly one, that nearly spoiled of my daily fun. From the attached New York Times article I learned that many Wall Streeters also became attached to curling. Thus my bit of upset--I didn't entirely like being associated in this or any other way with these guys who brought us the Great Recession.

They got hooked in part because CNBC, the financial network most of them watch during the day, for the past two weeks preempted much of its normal programming to expand NBC's Olympic coverage.

And curling more than any other sport was broadcast in place of Squawk Box, Power Lunch, and the Closing Bell. And so, instead of Maria Bartiromo, they got to know and look in on the captains of the Canadian and U.S teams--"Skip" for "skipper" (that's what they call them) Kevin Martin and "Skip" John Shuster.

Maria's back now and though I like to check her out every day, I do miss seeing the Kevin Martin and his teammates taking on the world. So successfully, in fact, that they took home the gold.