Did you know that the oldest person to win a medal in the winter Olympics won it in curling? I would love to have an Olympic medal! Gymnastics wasn’t in the cards for me. I grew up out in the sticks and didn’t have access to gymnastics classes until it was too late. Plus, I’m way too tall. Boo. I’m terrible at running, and if I break a ten-minute-per-mile average in a long distance race I would do cartwheels. (Since I am pretty much the opposite of Kenya, this is no surprise.) I’m mediocre at skiing, and snowboarding didn’t even really become a thing until I was already older than most of the medalists. Pretty much, name a sport, and I can tell you why I will never have a medal. However, curling? There just might be something there! Crazy pants, round stones, sweeping…I think I could handle it. I mean, I know it would take lots of dedicated training, but I am sure I could do it!
My first curling experience was during the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. A friend’s birthday fell during the games, and she had an Olympic themed birhtday party. She set up a court for curling in her living room. The hardwood floors acted as ice, she taped out the house and hoglines, swiffers were the brooms, and squash were the stones. It was a lot of fun, and we weren’t so bad. There was hope! I also lived only a couple of blocks from the Saint Paul Curling Club. That was clearly a sign, especially once I found out that many of the US Olympic team members train there. I was clearly already on my way.
At some point, a friend and I made a pact that we would learn curling. We looked into crazy curling pants. The trick was making it happen. Joining a league was pricey, especially since we thought we should perhaps know how to do it before we joined a team. We tried to find lessons, but that seemed to hit a dead end. At some point, one of her business contacts mentioned that he curls. At the SPCC! He said we could potentially do an intro to curling party. What? Perfect!
It took a little while to sort out, but we recently made it happen. A date was set. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get crazy pants. We did get an e-mail with some guidance of what to wear. We were told to dress warm, as ice is cold. Which, I know ice is cold, but isn’t there some sort of technology that allows for the ice to stay frozen while the air is toasty? No? Huh. We were told to wear clean, rubber-soled shoes and pants that allowed for range of motion. Specifically, we were told we would need to be able to squat like a catcher in baseball. I admit, baseball is not my favorite and I don’t know much about it, but I do know how far a catcher squats. I somehow missed such squatting in my watching of the Olympics. Perhaps he was just exaggerating to insure we would be wearing items to flex in. I planned to wear some running pants, just in case.
We all met at the curling club at our appointed time. Our contact had us gather on the club’s super cushy sofas, around a fireplace. So far, so good. He started with a brief history of curling. Apparently curling is a lot like golf. Did not see that coming. Like golf, it started in Scotland. Like golf, it’s a muscle memory sport. Like golf, there are crazy pants. At least on the Norwegians. I was feeling less optimistic about my Olympic options. He mentioned that he had been curling since he was 11. He went on to say that it was a late start, and thus he had no prospects of the Olympics. What? Most Olympians start at age four or five. His daughter is five, and he’s hoping maybe she has a shot at the Olympics. Darn. Clearly I am a certain number of years too late. I still held onto a smidgen of hope. After all, maybe I was secretly harboring a knack for curling, and would be on my way from Curling 101 to the next Olympics! It could happen!
First, some curling basics. Each team has eight stones (one team is yellow, one is red). The stones are made from granite, and weight about forty pounds. By the way, this has nothing to do with the weight measure of a stone. Boo. The scoring is based on how close the stones are to the center of the house. Whichever color is closest scores. A point is scored for each stone in proximity to the closest stone, and ceases at the first stone of the opposite color in range. There are four players on each team. First, second, vice-skip, and skip. The skip is like the captain. They control the game. They decide where the stone will get aimed, how fast it is released, which direction it is curled, everything. They hang out by the house, and direct the rest of the team with what to do. The sweepers are directed with how much to sweep. The sweeping helps the stone move down the ice by decreasing the friction of the stone on the ice. Still hanging in there. We moved on to delivery. This is the process of the player moving the stone down the ice. Real curlers have special shoes that have teflon on the bottom to help them slide on the ice for delivery. The curler uses a hack, which is like a block that runners use. The delivery involves three steps. Push, retract, push. The first push is to get the stone moving on the ice. The retract is to get into position, and the last push is pushing off the hack into a lunge position. This is when the stone is pushed across the ice. To direct the stone, or “curl,” one’s hand is turned from the three to the twelve position or from the nine to the twelve position whilst holding the stone. Our instructor looked super elegant and graceful doing all of this. He led us through the first phase, the push-retract-push.
The only moment in which I remotely know what I’m doing.
This is where my Olympic dreams began to fade. My lunges were reverse lunges, and I spent a lot of time on my butt. We were handed brooms to balance and moved to the hack. We also were offered shoe covers to compensate for our lack of special curling shoes. None of this seemed to help me.
Do style points count?
“Can we just try the belly flop method?” I murmured to one of my fellow curling trainees. She heard me say, “Can we try the Betty Ford method?”
“I didn’t know Betty Ford was a curler!”
“No. The belly flop method.” Though, let’s be honest, if Betty Ford were a curler, I imagine her method to involved some cocktails. I could also get behind that method. At least we were all laughing.
We moved on to delivering actual stones, learned to sweep, and learned all the signals for the skip.
Then, we broke for beer. Maybe a bit of the Betty Ford method after all? We learned about curling etiquette, which includes drinking scotch after the game. This helped with the slow crushing of my Olympic dreams.
After a break and some beer, we moved back to the ice to play a short game. A typical game involves eight to ten ends. We played two. This meant all the stones from one end to the other, then back to the starting end. We made signals, we shouted for sweeping, we provided laughs for the club members. The sweeping was pretty aerobic, and the delivery made for some serious muscle work. I was glad I wore layers, because by the end of the evening I was in my tee shirt and was a little funky. After our two ends, my team was declared the winner, and we retired back to the club for more beer.
By the end, I almost had the sweeping part down. Almost.
So, while my Olympic dreams are no more, we had a fun night. I will have a very different perspective watching curling in the next Olympics, for sure. I might give it a go casually, at some point.
In the meantime, I’ve heard that the oldest summer Olympians are in the equestrian field. I think I may have hope yet.