Curling, A 2010 Olympic Retrospective

I hate Curling. I think it's the dumbest thing on ice. Maybe it's fun to play, I sure don't know. All I know is that because I live east of the Atlantic and speak English, I'm confined to the Olympics coverage of the BBC which means, you guessed it: CURLING. Who won figure skating? I don't know, all they played was curling. Skiing? Beats me, there was too much curling on.

Curling resembles shuffleboard on ice, with a life-size board and big stones that are sent sailing across the ice to try and hit the target as many times as possible and stay there. The team is made up of the main shuffler person (I don't know the official name of the position and quite frankly I don't care enough about this game to go doing research about it) and minions that have to chase the stone down with brooms to sweep the ice and make the stone go more exactly where they want it. I wonder every time I see this if the sweeping actually even makes a difference or just provides enough physical exertion for people to contend that it's actually a sport. Curling seems to go on for hours, or maybe that's just the coverage. I think the game was started in Scotland because they all seem to have Scottish accents. Well no offense to the Scots, but the game sucks to watch.

And every time a skiier tumbles down a hill, or a skater falls on the ice, or those poor cross-country skiiers have to jog UP a hill with skis attached to their feet to try and cross the finish line first for the coveted gold medal, I wonder if they think: "Damn, and to think I could get the same medal for hanging out on the ice in a track suit and tacky shoes watching a stone."

Curling=NOT A SPORT.