Apologies to the Canucks among us, I'm sure you've seen this a bunch of times. I actually just watched it on TV and since I'd never watched curling outside of international competition, it was...
Apologies to the Canucks among us, I'm sure you've seen this a bunch of times. I actually just watched it on TV and since I'd never watched curling outside of international competition, it was cool to watch.
This made me think of @Dr_Amazing's thread the other day. Do you think of curling as a sport? I say yes, yet I think of it as essentially pool/snooker on ice and I think of pool as a game and not a sport. Weird.
I haven't seen this all put together before, but I was a bit surprised at how many of these I had seen. I don't watch that much curling. I was surprised that Kevin Martin only had two shots and I...
I haven't seen this all put together before, but I was a bit surprised at how many of these I had seen. I don't watch that much curling. I was surprised that Kevin Martin only had two shots and I think Rachel Homan only had 3.
I want to call curling a sport, but if so it has a very low bar for athleticism. That's not to say that it requires none, but the strength and speed required is much less than most other sports. There aren't a lot of other sports where the people at the top of their game can smoke cigarettes and drink beer while playing and it doesn't have a particularly negative effect on their ability to play the game, nor are there games where you almost strictly get better as you age, instead of peaking relatively early and then trying to hang on. Getting into the curling stance can be a bit difficult, but I'm 45 and out of shape and I just checked and I can still do it pretty easily.
So it's a sport in the same way that darts or billiards are - barely.
See, this is why it's tricky - I wouldn't call either of darts or billiards a sport myself. I can't claim to be the biggest or most knowledgeable fan of curling, but I think even though the lead...
See, this is why it's tricky - I wouldn't call either of darts or billiards a sport myself.
I can't claim to be the biggest or most knowledgeable fan of curling, but I think even though the lead might not need a lot of athleticism to throw, those sweepers work the ice! Also, I thought about it some more and realized bowling is probably a better analogue for curling than billiards/pool, or I suppose boules/bocce... and I think of bowling as (maybe barely) a sport, but not boules or bocce. Don't ask me to tell you why though, lol.
Apologies to the Canucks among us, I'm sure you've seen this a bunch of times. I actually just watched it on TV and since I'd never watched curling outside of international competition, it was cool to watch.
This made me think of @Dr_Amazing's thread the other day. Do you think of curling as a sport? I say yes, yet I think of it as essentially pool/snooker on ice and I think of pool as a game and not a sport. Weird.
I haven't seen this all put together before, but I was a bit surprised at how many of these I had seen. I don't watch that much curling. I was surprised that Kevin Martin only had two shots and I think Rachel Homan only had 3.
I want to call curling a sport, but if so it has a very low bar for athleticism. That's not to say that it requires none, but the strength and speed required is much less than most other sports. There aren't a lot of other sports where the people at the top of their game can smoke cigarettes and drink beer while playing and it doesn't have a particularly negative effect on their ability to play the game, nor are there games where you almost strictly get better as you age, instead of peaking relatively early and then trying to hang on. Getting into the curling stance can be a bit difficult, but I'm 45 and out of shape and I just checked and I can still do it pretty easily.
So it's a sport in the same way that darts or billiards are - barely.
See, this is why it's tricky - I wouldn't call either of darts or billiards a sport myself.
I can't claim to be the biggest or most knowledgeable fan of curling, but I think even though the lead might not need a lot of athleticism to throw, those sweepers work the ice! Also, I thought about it some more and realized bowling is probably a better analogue for curling than billiards/pool, or I suppose boules/bocce... and I think of bowling as (maybe barely) a sport, but not boules or bocce. Don't ask me to tell you why though, lol.