Curling
Curling is a sport in which players slide [|stones] on a sheet of ice toward a target area that is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called rocks, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The goal is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones once. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.
The player throwing the stone creates a curved trajectory, known as "curl", by gently rotating the stone as they release it. The stone’s path can also be influenced by two sweepers using brooms or brushes, who move alongside it and sweep the ice in its path. Sweeping reduces friction, allowing the stone to travel further and in a straighter line, with less curl. Strategy and teamwork play a crucial role in selecting the optimal path and final placement of the stone, and the skill of the players determines how accurately the stone follows the intended course.
History
Evidence that curling existed in Scotland in the early 16th century includes a curling stone inscribed with the date 1511 found when an old pond was drained at Dunblane, Scotland. The world's oldest curling stone and the world's oldest football are now kept in the same museum in Stirling. The first written reference to a contest using stones on ice coming from the records of Paisley Abbey, Renfrewshire, in February 1541. Two paintings, "Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap" and "The Hunters in the Snow" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, depict Flemish peasants curling. Scotland and the Low Countries had strong trading and cultural links during this time, which is also evident in the history of golf.File:Curling at Eglinton castle, Ayrshire, Scotland.jpg|thumb|A curling match at Eglinton Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland in 1860. The curling house is located to the left of the picture.
The word curling first appears in print in 1620 in Perth, Scotland, in the preface and the verses of a poem by Henry Adamson. The sport was also known as "the roaring game" because of the sound the stones make while travelling over the pebble. The verbal noun curling is formed from the Scots verb curl, which describes the motion of the stone.
Kilsyth Curling Club claims to be the first club in the world, having been formally constituted in 1716; it is still in existence today. Kilsyth also claims the oldest purpose-built curling pond in the world at Colzium, in the form of a low dam creating a shallow pool some in size. The International Olympic Committee recognises the Royal Caledonian Curling Club as developing the first official rules for the sport. However, although not written as a "rule book", this is preceded by Rev James Ramsay of Gladsmuir, a member of the Duddingston Curling Club, who wrote An Account of the Game of Curling in 1811, which speculates on its origin and explains the method of play.
In the early history of curling, the playing stones were simply flat-bottomed stones from rivers or fields, which lacked a handle and were of inconsistent size, shape, and smoothness. Some early stones had holes for a finger and the thumb, akin to ten-pin bowling balls. Unlike today, the thrower had little control over the 'curl' or velocity and relied more on luck than on precision, skill, and strategy. The sport was often played on frozen rivers although purpose-built ponds were later created in many Scottish towns. For example, the Scottish poet David Gray describes whisky-drinking curlers on the Luggie Water at Kirkintilloch.
File:Curling on Lake of Menteith - geograph.org.uk - 1756810.jpg|thumb|Curling on Lake of Menteith from 2010. The last official Grand Match was held here in 1979.
In Darvel, East Ayrshire, the weavers relaxed by playing curling matches using the heavy stone weights from the looms' warp beams, fitted with a detachable handle for the purpose. Central Canadian curlers often used 'irons' rather than stones until the early 1900s. Canada is the only country known to have done this, while others experimented with wood or ice-filled tins.
Outdoor curling was very popular in Scotland between the 16th and 19th centuries because the climate provided good ice conditions every winter. Scotland is home to the international governing body for curling, the World Curling Federation in Perth, which originated as a committee of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, the mother club of curling. Some outdoor curling bonspiels still exist today.
In the 19th century, several private railway stations in the United Kingdom were built to serve curlers attending bonspiels, such as those at Aboyne, Carsbreck, and Drummuir.
Today, the sport is most firmly established in Canada, having been taken there by Scottish emigrants. The Royal Montreal Curling Club, the oldest sports club still active in North America, was established in 1807. The first curling club in the United States was established in 1830, and the sport was introduced to Switzerland and Sweden before the end of the 19th century, also by Scots. Today, curling is played all over Europe and has spread to Brazil, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Korea.
The first world championship for curling was limited to men and was known as the Scotch Cup, held in Falkirk and Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1959. The first world title was won by the Canadian team from Regina, Saskatchewan, skipped by Ernie Richardson. The skip is the team member who calls the shots; see below.
Olympics
Curling has been a medal sport in the Winter Olympic Games since the 1998 Winter Olympics. It currently includes men's, women's, and mixed doubles tournaments.In February 2002, the International Olympic Committee retroactively decided that the curling competition from the 1924 Winter Olympics would be considered official Olympic events and no longer be considered demonstration events. Thus, the first Olympic medals in curling, which at the time was played outdoors, were retroactively awarded for the 1924 Winter Games, with the gold medal won by Great Britain, two silver medals by Sweden, and the bronze by France. A demonstration tournament was also held during the 1932 Winter Olympic Games between four teams from Canada and four from the United States, with Canada winning 12 games to 4.
Since the sport's official addition in the 1998 Olympics, Canada has dominated the sport with their men's teams winning gold in 2006, 2010, and 2014, and silver in 1998 and 2002. The women's team won gold in 1998 and 2014, a silver in 2010, and a bronze in 2002 and 2006. The mixed doubles team won gold in 2018.
Equipment
Curling sheet
The playing surface or curling sheet is defined by the World Curling Federation Rules of Curling. It is a rectangular area of ice, carefully prepared to be as flat and level as possible, in length by in width. The shorter borders of the sheet are called the backboards.A target, the house, is centred on the intersection of the centre line, drawn lengthwise down the centre of the sheet and the tee line, drawn from, and parallel to, the backboard. These lines divide the house into quarters. The house consists of a centre circle and three concentric rings, of diameters 4, 8, and 12 feet, formed by painting or laying a coloured vinyl sheet under the ice and are usually distinguished by colour. A stone must at least touch the outer ring in order to score ; otherwise, the rings are merely a visual aid for aiming and judging which stone is closer to the button.
Two hog lines are drawn from, and parallel to, the backboard.
The hacks, which give the thrower something to push against when making the throw, are fixed behind each button. On indoor rinks, there are usually two fixed hacks, rubber-lined holes, one on each side of the centre line, with the inside edge no more than from the centre line and the front edge on the hack line. A single moveable hack may also be used.
The ice may be natural, but is usually frozen by a refrigeration plant pumping a brine solution through numerous pipes fixed lengthwise at the bottom of a shallow pan of water. Most curling clubs have an ice maker whose main job is to care for the ice. At the major curling championships, ice maintenance is extremely important. Large events, such as national/international championships, are typically held in an arena that presents a challenge to the ice maker, who must constantly monitor and adjust the ice and air temperatures as well as air humidity levels to ensure a consistent playing surface. It is common for each sheet of ice to have multiple sensors embedded in order to monitor surface temperature, as well as probes set up in the seating area and in the compressor room. The surface of the ice is maintained at a temperature of around.
A key part of the preparation of the playing surface is the spraying of water droplets onto the ice, which form pebble on freezing. The pebbled ice surface resembles an orange peel, and the stone moves on top of the pebbled ice. The pebble, along with the concave bottom of the stone, decreases the friction between the stone and the ice, allowing the stone to travel further. As the stone moves over the pebble, any rotation of the stone causes it to curl, or travel along a curved path. The amount of curl can change during a game as the pebble wears; the ice maker must monitor this and be prepared to scrape and re-pebble the surface prior to each game.
Curling stone
The curling stone is made of granite and is specified by the World Curling Federation, which requires a weight between, a maximum circumference of, and a minimum height of. The only part of the stone in contact with the ice is the running surface, a narrow, flat annulus or ring, wide and about in diameter; the sides of the stone bulge convex down to the ring, with the inside of the ring hollowed concave to clear the ice. This concave bottom was first proposed by J. S. Russell of Toronto, Ontario, Canada sometime after 1870, and was subsequently adopted by Scottish stone manufacturer Andrew Kay.The granite for the stones comes from two sources: Ailsa Craig, an island located in the Firth of Clyde off the Ayrshire coast of Scotland, and the Trefor Granite Quarry, North of the Llŷn Peninsula, Gwynedd in Wales. These locations provide four variations in colour known as Ailsa Craig Common Green, Ailsa Craig Blue Hone, Blue Trefor and Red Trefor.
Blue Hone has very low water absorption, which prevents the action of repeatedly freezing water from eroding the stone. While the comparably lesser quality Ailsa Craig Common Green granite falls off naturally and can just be picked from the site, Blue Hone requires dislodging from the cliff face. In the past, most curling stones were made from Blue Hone, but the island is now a wildlife reserve, and the quarry is restricted by environmental conditions that exclude blasting.
Kays of Scotland has been making curling stones in Mauchline, Ayrshire, since 1851 and has the exclusive rights to the Ailsa Craig granite, granted by the Marquess of Ailsa, whose family has owned the island since 1560. According to the 1881 Census, Andrew Kay employed 30 people in his curling stone factory in Mauchline. The last harvest of Ailsa Craig granite by Kays took place in 2013, after a hiatus of 11 years; 2,000 tons were harvested, sufficient to fill anticipated orders through at least 2020. Kays have been involved in providing curling stones for the Winter Olympics since Chamonix in 1924 and has been the exclusive manufacturer of curling stones for the Olympics since the 2006 Winter Olympics.
Trefor granite comes from the Yr Eifl or Trefor Granite Quarry in the village of Trefor on the north coast of the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, Wales and has produced granite since 1850. Trefor granite comes in shades of pink, blue, and grey. The quarry supplies curling stone granite exclusively to the Canada Curling Stone Company, which has been producing stones since 1992 and supplied the stones for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
A handle is attached by a bolt running vertically through a hole in the centre of the stone. The handle allows the stone to be gripped and rotated upon release; on properly prepared ice the rotation will bend the path of the stone in the direction in which the front edge of the stone is turning, especially as the stone slows. Handles are coloured to identify each team, two popular colours in major tournaments being red and yellow.
In competition, an electronic handle known as the Eye on the Hog may be fitted to detect hog line violations. This electronically detects whether the thrower's hand is in contact with the handle as it passes the hog line and indicates a violation by lights at the base of the handle. The eye on the hog eliminates human error and the need for hog line officials. It is mandatory in high-level national and international competition, but its cost, around US$650 each, currently puts it beyond the reach of most curling clubs.