I.

Introduction

Curling, winter sport in which players slide heavy granite stones down a sheet of ice at a circular target area. As the stone slides, teammates can sweep the ice in its path with brooms or brushes. This warms the ice a little, reducing friction and causing the stone to slide farther and straighter. Curling appears to be a simple game, but to master it players must learn complex strategies.

Curling matches, called bonspiels, are played between two teams of four players each. The game is most popular in Canada, where more than 1 million people participate. In more than 30 other countries, an estimated total of 100,000 curlers play the sport.

The origin of the term curling is unclear, but some people believe that it derives from the Scottish term curr, which means “to make a low or hoarse murmuring sound.” As the stone slides down the ice, it makes a rumbling sound. The name also may come from the fact that players release their throws so that the stones curl slightly to the right or left as they slide down the ice.

II.

Playing Area

Curling originated as an outdoor game played on frozen lakes and rivers, but today it is played almost exclusively indoors at curling clubs or ice rinks built specifically for the sport. A typical North American club has six to eight playing areas. These playing areas are long and narrow sheets of ice. The club may also include locker rooms, a restaurant, and a viewing area that overlooks the ice.

A sheet of curling ice is 146 ft (44.5 m) long and 14 ft (4.3 m) wide. Embedded in the ice 4 ft (1.2 m) from the sheet’s end is a foothold called a hack. Each end of the sheet also has a circle 12 ft (3.7 m) in diameter, called the house. The house has three concentric scoring rings of different colors. The center of each circle, called the tee, is 12 ft (3.7 m) from the hack.

Players begin their throws by pushing off from the hack and gliding along with the stone as it slides down the ice. A line called the hog line, 33 ft (10.1 m) down the ice from the hack, marks how far players can glide before releasing the stone. Once released, the stone must pass beyond the hog line at the other end of the ice to remain in play. It also cannot pass beyond the back line directly behind the house at the other end of the ice, or hit the short side walls that serve as sidelines for the playing area. The side walls prevent stones from sliding onto neighboring sheets of ice.

III.

Equipment

The curling stone is the game’s most important piece of equipment. The stone is a disk-shaped granite rock, which is 42 lb (19 kg). It has a handle attached to its top side. The bottom side is concave (curving inward), so that only a thin rim of rock is in contact with the ice. Nearly all of the curling stones in use in the world are manufactured in Scotland from rock quarried in Scotland or Wales.

Curlers wear special shoes. One shoe has a rubber sole to grip the ice, while the other has a low-resistance material such as Teflon covering the sole. This allows the curler to slide on the ice when necessary.

Curlers sweep the ice in front of a teammate’s throw with a broom or brush. Players originally used brooms made with stiff corn fibers—similar to common household brooms. However, long-handled brushes have largely replaced brooms because they sweep more effectively. The brush head is usually made of hog hair, horse hair, or a nylon synthetic. Many curlers use a pair of gloves to keep their hands warm while sweeping.

IV.

Rules

A curling game consists of ten segments, called ends. During an end, each player on each team slides two stones from one end of the ice to the other. The teams play from the same end of the ice, and a coin flip determines which team throws first in the first end that is played.

The players alternate throwing, between teams. The order in which players throw is determined by their positions. The lead throws first, followed by the second. The third, also called the vice skip, then throws. The skip, who usually serves as the team captain, throws last. When all throws have been completed, the teams move to the other end of the ice and begin a new end from there.

During the other players’ throws, the skip directs the strategy of the game by standing in the house at the far end of the ice and indicating with a broom or brush where the stones should be delivered. The other players then aim for that spot, allowing for the curl of the stone as it travels down the ice. When the skip throws, the third indicates where the stone should go. During a throw, teammates run or slide down the ice in front of the stone as it travels. They are allowed to brush the ice in the stone’s path with their brooms or brushes, but if they touch the stone with their brushes, it is removed from play.

Players aim their stones close to the tee, or they attempt to knock the opposing team's stones away from the tee. The object of the game is to complete each end with as many stones as possible closer to the tee than any of the opponent’s stones. Stones must be in the house to count. Curling games have no referees, and the house’s colored scoring rings help players judge which stones are closer to the center.

Only one team can score in each end, and one point is given for each stone that is closer to the tee than the other team's nearest stone. In most matches, only a few stones remain in play after the final throw. For example, if most of the stones have been knocked out of play during the end, only four stones may remain in the house after all throws have been made. If one team has two stones closest to the center, and the other team has one stone farther out, and the first team has one more stone even farther out, the first team is awarded two points. The points come from the two stones that are closer to the tee than the opponent’s nearest one.

The team that scores in one end throws first in the next end. The team with the most total points after ten ends wins. Ties are broken by playing an extra end. A team can concede a match if it believes it is too far behind in points to catch up.

V.

Throwing Technique

The key to curling properly is delivering the rock smoothly and accurately. The curling delivery is a series of moves that should be executed in one fluid motion. It is described here for a right-handed curler:

Step One: The curler puts the rock on the ice in front of the hack and then places the right foot firmly in the hack and crouches down. The curler looks at the target indicated by the skip at the far end of the sheet.

Step Two: The curler grasps the handle of the rock gently in the right hand while holding the brush or broom in the left hand for balance. Raising the hips, the curler slowly slides the stone back a little, still focusing on the target. (Some players lift the stone slightly in a backswing.)

Step Three: The curler slides or swings the rock forward on the ice and pushes forward with the right leg. Still holding the rock, the curler shifts his or her body weight from the right leg to the left. As the curler slides forward with the stone, the left foot swings under the center of the body directly behind the stone, while the right leg extends behind the body.

Step Four: The curler slides out, right arm extended, and releases the rock before reaching the hog line by giving it a gentle twist clockwise or counterclockwise. This twist makes the rock curl as it travels down the ice.

VI.

Strategy

Because strategy is so important to the sport, curling is often referred to as chess on ice. Part of that strategy is knowing how to execute different types of shots and how much force to give a throw in a particular situation. Whenever possible, a good skip will ask members of the team to attempt the type of shot they execute best. Depending on the circumstances, the skip may want a takeout (in which a player knocks an opponent’s rock out of play) or a draw shot (in which a player throws the stone so that it comes to rest on its own). Traditionally, leads play draw shots more effectively, while seconds and thirds are better at takeouts. Skips are usually a team’s best player and can play any shot necessary.

One of the most common strategic shots is the come-around draw, in which the rock curls around behind another stone at the end of the throw. It is then somewhat protected from being knocked away by a subsequent shot. Another important shot is the freeze, in which a player throws the rock so that it comes to rest in front of and touching one of the other team’s stones. If the other team’s stone is behind the tee, the freeze shot positions a rock between it and the tee, making it difficult for the other team to knock it away without knocking away their own stone.

The last rock of an end is called the hammer. The team with the hammer has the advantage because if the team’s strategy for that end does not work out, the skip can always use the hammer to try to salvage the end by making a final shot that slides closest to the tee. The skip can also use the hammer to knock any remaining stones out of play so that no one scores. If neither team scores, the team that had the hammer retains it for the next end. Because it is more difficult to score without the hammer, a team that scores without it has stolen the end.

VII.

Competition

All international curling bonspiels are governed by the World Curling Federation (WCF), headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. The sport’s major competitions are the Olympic Games, held every four years for men and women, and the annual world championships. The world championships have four separate classes of competition: men, women, junior men, and junior women. The junior events are for curlers 21 years of age and younger.

Countries bid annually to host the world championships. Because curling is so popular in Canada, the competition is usually held there. In each of the four classes of competition, ten countries compete in a round-robin format. The top four teams advance to the semifinals, with the two winners meeting in the finals. All the matches are one-game events.

VIII.

History

No one knows exactly when curling originated, but the first convincing evidence of a similar game, played outdoors with rocks on ice, was found in Scotland, where small, flat stones were discovered in dried-out or drained lakes and ponds. These stones, called loofies (Scottish for “palm of the hand”), are believed to have been left there in the early 1500s. The oldest dated one is from 1511.

Scottish players nurtured the game, improved it, established rules, adopted it as a national pastime, and carried it to other countries when they moved there. Many of the game's traditions are tied to Scotland. For example, playing bagpipes and wearing kilts often form part of ceremonies at curling events.

The evolution of curling was tied directly to improvements in equipment, primarily the stones. As stones became rounder and heavier, people began to attach handles to them, allowing players to throw more accurately. By the late 1800s the well-finished circular design that players use today had emerged.

The rules of the game were loosely kept at first. The number of players, the length of the ice surface, and the size of the rings varied from township to township. In 1838 the Grand Caledonian Curling Club was formed in Scotland to help standardize rules. Queen Victoria of England renamed it the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1843.

Scottish immigrants spread curling to other countries, and the game became most popular in Canada, because it is an ideal game for a country with long winters. The first Canadian curlers are thought to have been soldiers stationed in Québec City, Québec; these soldiers fashioned iron versions of curling stones in the winter of 1759 to 1760. The Montréal Curling Club, founded in 1807, was the first North American sports club. A Canadian branch of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club was formed in 1852. The first curling club in the United States was organized in 1832 in Michigan. Curlers there originally used wooden stones made from hickory trees.

Curling originated as an outdoor game, but as the sport developed, clubs began to build covered rinks. These rinks offered protection from the weather and the ability to play at night. Players in small towns built small wooden structures, while curlers in many larger cities used brick buildings with room for four to six sheets of ice. At first, all indoor ice was created by pouring water and maintaining below-freezing temperatures in the playing area. Refrigeration technology took hold in the early 20th century, so the rinks no longer needed below-freezing temperatures for the ice to stay frozen.

The men's world championships grew out of an annual challenge match called the Scotch Cup, contested between Canada and Scotland and first held in 1959. In 1961 the event was expanded to include the United States. Gradually, other countries joined the competition, and a true world championship took shape. The first junior men’s world championship took place in 1975; the first women’s world championship occurred in 1979; and the first junior women’s world championship was held in 1988.

Canada dominated international play in the early years, but other countries improved over time. Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States joined Canada as top curling nations.

Curling appeared at the Olympics as a demonstration sport in 1924, 1932, 1988, and 1992. The sport gained status as a medal sport at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. The first teams to win gold medals were the Swiss men’s squad, skipped by Patrick Huerlimann, and the Canadian women’s squad, skipped by Sandra Schmirler.