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Story
by Randy H. Milgrom
Audio by Bob Merion and Eleanor
Jones
Photography by Peter Ottlakan and
Bob
Merion
Introductory
Confession
I grew up in the late '50s and early '60s in an ordinary
Detroit area suburb, which means I was occasionally bored
enough while watching television to glance at the curling
matches broadcast by the CBC affiliate in Windsor, Ontario,
Canada, just south across the Detroit River. Though this was
as near as we ever got to exotica in those early years --
or at least to anything resembling international fare -- no
one in my household tarried long enough on this channel to
do much more than snicker at the game's apparent silliness.
(And this was before the remote control.) Since it didn't
seem to rise to our level of sophisticated sporting taste
(we were big bowlers), the allure of this curious throwing
and sweeping exercise remained an amusing mystery.
Until this afternoon -- and I'm more than mildly perturbed
that it took me more than three decades and a trip to the
Swiss Alps to discover how exciting these matches can be.
The rules, at first glance, seem as complicated and random
as any might appear under crash course conditions, but the
strategies and options that flow from them are immediately
intriguing. Luckily for me, I had the multi-lingual and poly-tasking
Beat Gottschalck, technical director of the Games, at my side
to guide me through my virgin experience with this otherwise
inscrutable game. You, on the other hand, have me.
Basic
Rules
Five of the 16 countries with teams at the 2001 Winter World
Transplant Games were involved in this afternoon's curling
matches: France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Great Britain.
Each team is comprised of four members -- they call the captain
'skip' -- and each member must both throw and broom (more
on that later). Each team starts each game with eight 'stones,'
which, if you're closer to the action than your TV set allows,
are actually quite intricate and beautiful: the handles are
made of shiny curved chrome, connected from above to the grayish
pearl-like stones, whose tops are either bright red or bright
blue, and divided between the teams accordingly.
The basic goal of the match is to score points by 'throwing'
the stone -- which in this case means lowering oneself and
gently skimming it, with a well-informed underhanded thrust
-- along the ice toward the target at the other end. (If I
haven't yet mentioned that this game is played on ice, this
is probably a good time to do so, and for more than one reason:
curling is somewhat similar to the popular Italian game of
bocce, and the French boules (except that this game is played
over ice) -- and I'm not the only one who says so. Others
who might think it bears a similarity to shuffleboard or horseshoes
would be right (only less so), while those familiar with bowling
will be helped by envisioning the field of play as an alley,
only more slippery.
Though there are certainly important addenda to the following,
most basic scoring rule (and this is where I want to especially
emphasize that if you want to really learn something about
the game, or at the very least not just sit there in front
of your computer and be misinformed, you'll want to hang around
with the amazingly patient and informative Mr. Gottschalck),
the team with more of its stones left sitting in the target
area after both teams have thrown all eight will earn the
higher score. One of the more important permutations of this
rule -- which will come in handy later -- is that even if
one team, for instance, has three stones left and the other
has only one, the team with three will win, but only by a
score of 1-0, rather than 3-1, if that team's singular stone
is closer to the middle of the target than any one of the
other team's three stones. Got it? Never mind.
The target, by the way, is called the 'house' -- for baseball
fans who cheer the act of coming 'home' -- and its shape is
that of a bull's eye, which is common in darts and archery
and perhaps many other games I have neither heard of nor played.
(I'm a basketball player first and foremost, and I can guarantee
you that there are absolutely no similarities between a game
of 'hoops' and a curling match -- but I fell in love with
this other game, anyway, and I'm about to tell you why.)
Brooms
and Knock-Outs
"Brooming" was the largest source of titters when
we were kids, and I must admit it remains the funniest part
of the whole affair. Let's start with the brooms themselves:
they appear from long distance to be more or less ordinary
maintenance items, but from close range it becomes obvious
that they have no utility other than to be used in the sport
of curling. The bristled end is so small in comparison to
the length of its handle that it calls to mind a giant's toothbrush.
Surely one would not use it to sweep a driveway; a hoe would
be just as handy.
Yet as it turns out, brisk sweeping motions, performed immediately
in front of a moving stone, will heat its path and -- at least
theoretically -- speed its progress. It even seemed to work
a couple of times. (This brooming was also often accompanied
by a fair amount of whooping, as if the stones could hear,
and thus obey, the various commands to either speed up or
slow down. Come to think of it, since all of the exhortations
were screamed in a language that was, well, foreign to me,
it's possible that the stones understood at least as well
as I.)
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the game is that one
team can undo the best efforts of the other by simply knocking
an otherwise beautifully placed stone entirely off the ice's
surface -- which not only adds a dimension of sheer brute
force to the enterprise but also its opposite, which is strategy
(or brain power), and any blocking throws or other sabotage-related
moves that might flow from that.
France
vs. Italy
Usually a curling match is played in eight game sets, but
the Games' time constraints forced matches to be decided after
just three -- a decided disadvantage for the Italians, who
found themselves down to the French, 2-0, heading into the
final game. With only three stones left to throw for each
side in the third and final game, the tension built and the
action finally slowed. Italy had three stones at home, while
France had none. (I don't know if that's how the CBC broadcaster
might have announced the scores in my days of yore, but that
last sentence had an authoritative ring to it, didn't it?)
What this meant, of course, was that if the game had ended
right there, the Italians would have eked out an unlikely,
come-from-behind 3-2 victory. But the French still had a chance
to not only place one of their final red stones within a closer
distance to the middle than any one of the Italian's blue
ones, but they could also knock any one of the blue stones
out of the home area. But with just two stones left per side,
the score was still 3-0, and the steady stream of foreign
screams increased. Beat, acting as a referee of sorts, it
seemed, would speak to clarify a rule in German, debate a
strategy in French, and then turn around to answer another
one of my panting questions in clear and patient English.
The next French throw was the play of the day -- a near-perfect
bulls-eye, which reduced Italy's lead in the game to 1-0 (see
confusing explanation of this maddening rule, above), which
put France ahead in the match, 2-1. Though the next Italian
throw was fairly well executed -- knocking the red stone out
of the bull's eye -- the red stone still remained home, at
a point that was still closer to center than one of Italy's
three blue ones. After the last French stone skidded past
home without touching a thing, the final scene was set: if
the last Italian thrower could knock that last, lingering
red stone out (and a narrow, unblocked lane remained available
for just such a possibility) -- without disturbing any of
the blue stones -- the Italian team would earn its last-throw
victory.
I don't know if it was the excitement of the match, the chaos
of the screaming entreaties from both sides, or the realization
that I was finally coming to an understanding of what was
on the line for the final thrower at the very moment that
he arched back to throw it, but I can tell you that I actually
felt my heart thumping against the triple layers of goose-filled
down and other apparel protecting me from the thin air and
brisk temperatures of the valley floor, and from the thick
sheet of ice beneath my shoes. I was excited!
But just as I was leaning over the ice to see where that
final stone might land, I realized that it wouldn't. Instead,
it came to rest woefully short, barely halfway to its intended
target, and well in front of the 'hogline,' which is the point
beyond which the stone must pass to be allowed to stay on
the ice. The French held on and won, 2-1.
A
Real Game
It did not appear that the thrower tripped, or slipped, or
was otherwise deceived or diverted. It was, in the plainest
of English vernacular, and in a characteristically crude form
of American slang, a classic 'choke' job. And that's what
makes curling, more than anything, a real game worth both
watching and playing. I loved it.
And I can't wait to introduce it to the fellas back home.
Results
- Gold: Great Britain
- Silver: France
- Bronze: Italy
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