Originally published February 2014.
Everyone gives curling a hard time. They question whether curling is good enough to be considered an Olympic sport. I say that curling is underrated. While the games are about 2 hours long each, curling is the best sport of the Winter Olympics.
Curling didn’t officially become an event at the Winter Olympics until 1998. The event that features two teams playing at a time, was finally added to the official Olympic program for the 1998 Nagano Games. There is a men’s curling team and a women’s curling team. They both play on the same board and there is no changes between the sexes.
Curling is a sport where players slide stones across a sheet of ice toward a target area. The stones weigh about 42 pounds and need to be pushed at the right angle in order to get to the perfect part of the target. Curling is a mix between bowling, darts and chess.
In order to get the stone to move in the right direction, there are sweepers who scrape the ice in order for the stone to glide easier down the strip of ice. There has to be the perfect amount of logic used in the game because one team’s stone can be used to push their opponent’s pieces out of the target.
The target that the teams are trying to get their stones into is called the house. So, basically, the sport is getting a heavy stone to the end of the ice into a target while both avoiding and hitting the other team’s stones.
Obviously, that sounds much harder than it seems on TV. Curling is a sport and it deserves respect. Here are 10 reasons why curling is the best Olympic sport.