Discussion: Curling, AOWN

If you grew up with David Attenborough, this is a must-listen:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/02/19/david-atte...

I'm just listening to my first (womens') curling match and all I can hear is HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Women's gold medal final is on live right now - another battle between the orienteering giants Sweden & Canada. What is super mind-blowing (at least to me) is that Sweden is using the red rocks and Canada is using the yellow = it just doesn't seem right

Go Canada Sweden go!!

Darn, the yellow team won. Wait. That's good.

Next up - the big show down between North America's two orienteering super-powers as Canada will beat the USA in women's hockey to move above them in the medal table

Unfortunately in the women´s hockey game between Europe's two orienteering super-powers the Swiss ladies beat Sweden for the bronze medals :(

for tomorrow: GO TEAM GB!
woo!

What is the thinking behind curling coverage on CNBC (as opposed to one of their other properties)? It is not by accident that they decide to showcase it on the daytime business channel.

It is a strategic game, so I've heard. Makes for good business viewing.

About as fast moving as some board meetings I've attended too. A lot of up and down, long pensive stares and a bit of shouting. Yep that's the one.

Curling was supposed to have been very popular on Wall Street during the Vancouver Olympics.

Canada vs. the Brits for men's curling gold in a couple of hours, and the Swede coaching the Brits doesn't like the behaviour of the Canadian team:

"'The aggressive style we have seen from the Canadians here, that's something I don't like about the sport,' Gran said. 'I don't think it helps anyone. It doesn't help the player and it doesn't help his teammates.'

The Jacobs team, from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., is known for being animated on the pebble. They celebrate in a very demonstrative way, with fist pumps, high fives and loud exclamations.

They've been known to show their frustrations as well with broom slams and angry utterances."

I think curling is way underrated. The scoring is objective, automatically making it better than at least half of the other sports. The play progresses throughout the end, with strategy that you can follow as it builds. It's interesting the whole way through, as opposed to just the final sprint for the nordic events, and there's none of that, "oh I'll got the bathroom for a minute... oh shit, I missed the one exciting moment of the whole game!" business you get with ice hockey.

Okay, how many sports fans did I manage to tweak with that? Is curling as controversial as other favorite AP topics?

Curling is fine. It is not a very excited sport for me because it lacks of physical activity but it's still better than ski-cross where athlete needs to have (a lot) of luck to finish the course without an injury. The injury factor is just too high for me to consider ski-cross a sport. It is only a show and fight on skies but it is on Olympics, so it must be a sport, at least for many people. It is not very Olympic but as long people watch and nobody dies everything seems to be right.

Curling - sport yes, but Olympic?

More of an olympic sport than orienteering will ever be (and I love orienteering)

Cristina, real sports are played on land, so say what you want.

Being a curler myself, I can vouch for the strategy aspect - not only do you have to constantly rethink and modify strategy during each end, but you have to constantly watch how each rock behaves and modify strategy based on that, too, since ice conditions change constantly (more brushing in one area means rocks there will behave differently). It's taxing for the mind, and for those sweeping, it's taxing for the body.

Also, men's curlers brought on the gold by a rout of GB...

Curling and Wall Street:

http://www.canada.com/olympics/news/curling-is-in-...

First, it was stoner frat boys and now it’s the financiers of Wall Street.

And this is surprising how? ;)

Curling, Trail orienteering, Chess, Bridge,.......
Looking from a distance I don't know why we don't have one common "Olympic Games" for strategic outdoor activities, sports, etc.

Curling isn't in the same category as the other three.

Because it is a sport?

I think I'll just curl up in from of my coal stove with a burrito and a tall glass of chocolate milk and watch some curling.

The most pertinent observation by my missus on the mysterious sport of men's curling -"I'll bet they don't sweep the floors at home"

Sure they do - but only in a stripe from one side of the living room to the other, and there's a weird pile of rocks by the couch.

Call it what you will, but I still think curling was invented by a bunch of over-enthusiastic twits who discovered that shotput on a frozen lake was a really stupid idea.

The injury factor is just too high for me to consider ski-cross a sport. It is only a show and fight on skies but it is on Olympics, so it must be a sport, at least for many people.

Boxing?

Curling, Trail orienteering, Chess, Bridge

The difference is that the sweeper heart rate approaches the 200 bpm range. That's alot while also thinking. To me, curlers are athletes. Curling is a brilliant sport for the reasons already mentioned in this thread, and it is no surprise (at least to me), that it is broadcast on a business/economics channel. I think the appeal is congruent.

As for the other activities mentioned in the above quote, chess and bridge (neither of which are proper nouns, btw), merit Olympic-level recognition as well. The brain is a physical system just like muscles, lungs, hearts, and so forth (including will, determination, focus (part of the brain, just like lactic exhaustion is part of the muscles)), that are tested at world-class events, and talent, skill, and training of that system warrant recognition just like any other. Chess and bridge are not necessarily the best tests of that system, but are among the best understood tests by the public at large. To me, that is what the Olympics are about.

As for trail-orienteering, I'm not sure why it is even mentioned in this thread or on a sports-related forum at all. Games like Carcassonne and Wiz-War are better, and are also more appealing, and have a wider audience, among the physically disabled, as well as the population at large. (Ok, I really do get why some people promulgate trail-o, but that doesn't make it worthy of mention in this thread, this forum, or any other).

IMO, the tile game, Carcassonne is a poor choice as the results are often determined by luck (unlike Curling).
Chess and Bridge (matchpoints or IMPs) are great mental tests but a lot more abstract as some of the great recent Euro-games...
Caylus and Uwe Rosenberg-designed games are on the top of my list.

Maybe 'Snap' can become a new Olympic sport. It takes good reflexes to win that one.