Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Where the Olympic rings curl: The sport of curling

Are you interested in bowling on ice? Then turn off NBC and head over to MSNBC, CNBC, or the USA Network for its coverage of Olympic curling.

Not hooked yet? Sometimes curling is called chess on ice.

As far as I can gather, each curling team consists of four players--they take turns pushing the stone--curling's equivalent to the bowling ball--to get as close as possible to the center of dart board-like target and the end of the rectangular playing surface. The teams take turns pushing the stones; two of the players will utilize floor brooms, which are pretty much the type of brooms that school janitors use--to speed up the onward path of the stones.

Using a pushed curling stone to knock an opponents stone out of the scoring area is a large part of the strategy of curling.

However, after watching curling for a few days, I still can't figure completely understand the game.

But overall, the sport of curling can't be all bad--the game is more mental than physical, which is why there are any curling doping scandals.

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