Curling is back!

Curling is back! And, I don't mean what some people do to their hair. (They still do that, don't they?) I'm talking about the sport of curling... second only to hockey in Canada in popularity but catching on quickly in this country in light of the success of the U.S. curlings teams at the 2006 Winter Olympics - and with the 2010 winter games underway, curling is back. Curling is just one of the fascinating winter sports associated with the Olympcs that I've come to enjoy. I first wrote about curling and the winters games, in general, four years ago. What follows are excerpts, with some editing, from those two columns. I've come to be more of a fan of the winter games than I am the summer contests. I'm not sure why unless it's because many of the sports are alien to a lot of us in the U.S. - especially in the south. With the summer games, most of us can relate to track-and-field, basketball, swimming, diving, gymnastics, and, around here, at least, even the rowing and canoe/kayak events. I've always been a fan of ski jumping, bobsledding, speedskaing (not be be confused with figure skating, please), luge, and the downhill. But, four years ago and again this year, thanks to some innovative scheduling by NBC, I found myself watching the biathlon, cross-county skiing, and, yes, curling. Curling. Notice how nicely it rolls off your tongue. Curling. It was the butt of many a joke in this country during the 2006 Winter Olympics. But ponder this, those of you who keep track of such things and/or worry about them: had the U.S. men's curling team not captured the bronze, the U.S. would have wound up with 24 medals instead of 25 and been tied for second behind Germany with Canada for the most medals of the games. Curling is something akin to shuffleboard. A circular something - known as a stone - is pushed down a icy lane by one curler and then guided to the other end, where the scoring takes place, by two other curlers, wielding what those of us not in the know commonly refer to as "brooms." The idea is to guide your team's stone into the scoring square, sometimes striking other stones already there, sometimes not. The game is broken down into ends, something like innings in baseball. This is a direct quote from an AP dispatch from Torino, Italy, during the 2006 games: the Swedes played a conservative game to beat Switzerland with a double-takeout on the last stone of an extra end. I think that means something like "the Braves beat the Mets with a run-scoring double in their last at-bat in the 10th inning." I give those curling team members this much: I watched about two hours total over the two weeks of the 2006 games and not once did I see a single one of them slip and fall on their keister as they walked, trotted, etc., back and forth, up and down the ice, while working their little brooms in front of the stone. In 2006, there are 135 clubs that belong to the U.S. Curling Association - and more coming, according to the association's Web site. There are active curling clubs in 26 states at the time including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and also in the Great Lakes, New England and mid-Atlantic states. In the U.S. four years ago, there were over 15,000 curlers; in Canada, 872,000 people play curling - 56% of them ten or more times a year, according to the Canadian Curling Association. And, with the growing interest in the sport in the U.S. four years ago, I wondered if we were coming to scenarios like this one in this country: "Mom, can I use the broom?" "Sure. What are you going to do, sweep off the patio?" "No. I need it for curling practice." If they don't have a frozen pond or lake to use, kids will be marking off curling lanes in parking lots, greasing them down and using a rock they found next to the road and their brooms begin perfecting the fine art of curling. Curling, I'm sure, is physically and mentally demanding in its own right when it comes to winter sports. But, if there's a more demanding sport than the biathlon in the Oympics - summer or winter - I'm not sure what it is. The biathlon is a combination of cross-county skiing and target shooting. Competitors ski up to a shooting range three or four times during the event, after a lap or two of cross-country type skiing - and with their heart pounding and lungs gasping for air from the grueling trek are expected to hold a rifle steady enough to shoot - from different positions - at a target a couple hundred yards away - and set off on their skis again... only to stop and shoot again after another lap or two. You can almost feel the cold air searing your lungs as you watch them struggle up hills, chests heaving as they gasp for air. No thanks. Not for me. Besides, we don't have enough snow around here. But, there are plenty of brooms and parkings lots. So, it's off to curling practice. (Ken Stanford is the News Director for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, MAJIC 1029, and 124- ESPN Radio and Editor of AccessNorthGa.com.)