With the Winter Olympics well underway in South Korea, it’s time for The Geek Locker to talk about our favorite events at the games. I’ll be starting with an Olympic darling that has a leisurely and surprisingly historical (and stylish?) past and a controversial present: Curling.
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Curling, which got it’s start as a leisure sport for the Scots in the 16th century, has since been slowly growing in popularity. At the beginning, adults and children alike would spend time sliding crude, misshapen rocks over the ice that covered the lakes and lochs they called home. Initially, brooms were used to sweep snow off of the ice surface in advantageous ways to curve, slow, or hasten the trajectory of the stones. With handles being added to stones in the 17th century and official curling clubs being introduced in the 19th century, the progression of curling towards olympic prominence was indeed slow, but it no doubt matched the expansion of Scottish culture both domestically and internationally as its citizens spread throughout the world. Curling used to be called the “Roaring Game” because the stones ground across the hollow ponds and lochs created a loud roar. But as the sport moved towards more controlled indoor environments, the sport now lives up to this namesake more from the screams of the curlers themselves.
Modern curling has advanced far from the days spent lazily gliding oblong rocks over the local pond’s surface, but some interesting artifacts still remain from the sports’ origin. Nearly all the granite used to make curling stones for the entire world (except a few distributors in Canada) comes from a single small island in Scotland, the Ailsa Craig. The island provides multiple types of granite stones that are precision-ground and polished to fulfill the World Curling Federation’s requirements. The granite from Scotland (or sometimes Wales) is bored out of cut slabs and then run through its paces on what amounts to an industrial lathe and many other machines. Almost every tool that comes in contact with the stone is diamond-tipped or -edged for durability. The process is surprisingly manually intensive, but nonetheless very precise. If curling ever sees an uptick in popularity, the global manufacturing market of curling stones may need to advance and expand.
In addition to advances in the stones themselves, modern curling surfaces are more nuanced and advanced than at the sport’s beginnings. The ice is now “pebbled” with small water droplets (manually created, I’ll add) that give the ice the proper qualities for shot control. The small peaks and valleys on the ice’s surface effectively provide the “running surface” of the curling stone with a greater grip on the ice, allowing a rotating stone to curl more easily. Curlers can use the uneven ice to their advantage by modifying the surface with their brooms to essentially flatten the surface slightly by chipping and melting the ice. The sweeping can delay the shot’s sideways movement via rotation of the stone as it travels down the length of the ice and lead to some incredible shots.
To manipulate the ice in beneficial ways, the brooms that the athletes use have advanced significantly, and are still changing. Long ago, and also not that long ago, curlers used traditional hay brooms for curling (pictured above). Initially, they used brooms to clear snow away from the path of the stone when they played outside. However, in more controlled arenas, even these old brushes could be used to slightly (and inefficiently) modify the path of a curling stone across the pebbled surface. Modern brushes have a large flat pad with a nylon surface. The handles are made from composite or aluminum and are durable and effective. Of course, there are always advancements to be made, and recently drama has surrounded advancements in brush manufacturing. A recent controversy centered around the use of directionally-woven nylon fabrics, which greatly increase the friction between the ice and the broom. These brooms, in addition to chipping away the pebbles in the ice, more significantly melt the surface of the ice, giving curlers a new (and unwelcome) control over the trajectory of the stones, changing the game significantly.
At the end of the day, curling still maintains a sort of cultish following that stretches back further than almost every modern team sport. The community is tight-knit like rowing, but not mainstream in most countries, so making a living off the game can be tough for athletes tough. As a “precision-based” sport, curling may see an uptick in popularity as impact sports such as football begin to receive more and more scrutiny, though its’ geographical restrictions certainly make a worldwide presence difficult. The sport, like many, has what I will call “Olympicitis” in that it is popular once every four years. To buck this trend, the World Curling Federation and other governing bodies have a lot of work to do, but I would not be surprised if curling becomes a more mainstream pastime for those who have access to its entertainment.