The Winter Olympic Thread

[Lillehamring]

The new curling season started last night. My entire body is sore. Sweeping is fvcking hard work.

i can't believe you went through with it!

is the venue in the city or do you have to go out of town?

[Jordan]

i can't believe you went through with it!

Hell yeah--I've even got the shoes!

We had an intra-club bonspiel (fancy curling word for tournament) this weekend and I played three games. Even though it was a pretty laid-back atmosphere at the tournament, the combination of heavy sweeping and post-game drinking has got me exhausted. I'm very happy with the way I played--I missed a few shots here and there but I played much better than I expected to despite doing this only about 7 times, not having curled since the spring, and playing in a new position (second).

We lost on Friday but won both Saturday and today, so my team won the 2nd event final (the draws/brackets for curling tournaments are ridiculously convoluted and make absolutely no sense). Our skip is a good guy and we had a lot of fun this weekend.

I will also play in leagues on Wednesday and Thursday nights, plus I still have five more lessons as part of what I paid for when I signed up for the trial membership in March, after which I'll pay the remaining balance of the annual membership dues (fortunately for me, I get a discounts on my membership for both being a first-year curler and being under 30 years old).

So, yeah, I'm getting really into curling now. I'm right on track for 2018

is the venue in the city or do you have to go out of town?

The club is conveniently located just 5 miles away from me (I'm in the suburbs north of the City).

[Lillehamring]

Hell yeah--I've even got the shoes!

We had an intra-club bonspiel (fancy curling word for tournament) this weekend and I played three games. Even though it was a pretty laid-back atmosphere at the tournament, the combination of heavy sweeping and post-game drinking has got me exhausted. I'm very happy with the way I played--I missed a few shots here and there but I played much better than I expected to despite doing this only about 7 times, not having curled since the spring, and playing in a new position (second).

We lost on Friday but won both Saturday and today, so my team won the 2nd event final (the draws/brackets for curling tournaments are ridiculously convoluted and make absolutely no sense). Our skip is a good guy and we had a lot of fun this weekend.

I will also play in leagues on Wednesday and Thursday nights, plus I still have five more lessons as part of what I paid for when I signed up for the trial membership in March, after which I'll pay the remaining balance of the annual membership dues (fortunately for me, I get a discounts on my membership for both being a first-year curler and being under 30 years old).

So, yeah, I'm getting really into curling now. I'm right on track for 2018

The club is conveniently located just 5 miles away from me (I'm in the suburbs north of the City).

sweet, i'm sure there must be loads of clubs here, not sure the knees could take it---

fuck - the braves have just done us again----

[Jordan]

A big update on everyone's favorite Winter Olympics sport: CURLING.

The 2011 European championships are going on now. On the men's side, Rasmus Stjerne of Denmark is on top after the round-robin, and will play the famous trousers of Norway's Thomas Ulsrud in the 1-2 page playoff. Niklas Edin and his solid young Swedish rink are in 3rd, but since four teams finished tied for fourth, Edin will have to wait until a double-tiebreaker settles the logjam between the Czechs, Germany, Switzerland, and David Murdoch's Scottish rink to find out his next opponent.

It's a little more cut-and-dry on the women's side, where Sweden and Denmark are 1-2, followed by 2012 Women of Curling calendar cover girl Eve Muirhead of Scotland. Perennial contender Andrea Schöpp of Germany and Ludmila Privivkova's rotating team from Russia will play a tiebreaker for the final spot in the playoffs.

I find it kind of funny that England, Ireland and Wales have their own teams in curling. I can understand it in football and rugby, considering the histories of their FAs and of FIFA/IRB, but in curling?! Anyway, they all played in the B-divisions, but Ireland and England finished 1-2 in their group (Ireland whooped England, 8-1, though) and will play down with Hungary and Russia for a chance to be promoted to the top flight. In the women's B-division, England finished 7th out of 10, Ireland 9th, and Wales took home the wooden spoon.

In Canada, the preeminent curling nation, the first spots in the 2013 Roar of the Rings--the Olympics trials for Sochi 2014--were awarded to the winners of last weekend's 2011 Canada Cup. Kevin "The Old Bear" Martin won the men's draw while Jennifer Jones took the women's title. Martin and Jones are two of curling's most decorated skips--easily in the "best ever" discussion.

The Canadian provincial playdowns will start soon, with the eventual winners going to the national championships: the Scotties Tournament of Hearts for women, and the Tim Horton's Brier for men, both of which are huge deals up north. The Scotties and the Brier are regularly played in sold-out NHL-sized arenas and bring it excellent teleivision ratings in Canada.

Over here, my 2nd curling season is in full swing. I play Monday nights in the club championship league, Wednesdays in the men's league and Thursdays in a fun mixed league. I played as vice-skip on the winning team in a bonspiel (that's curlingese for what's essentially a tournament intertwined with a weekend-long party) hosted by our club for players with 5 years or less of experience. Also, it looks like I'll also be going to a bonspiel in Ontario next month, and will play in the Eastern U.S. region's under-5 championship up in Utica, NY's huge club in February.

Now, as for my Olympics aspirations... they're hardly, if at all, likely. When I finally started playing, I learned that curling looks so easy to do on TV is because the elite curlers are just that damn good. They make it look effortless. But part of the beauty of curling is that pretty much any team can have the chance to play against world-class opposition--in the U.S. and Canada, at least.

I've got no plans to play down for the U.S. national championships, but let's say I were on a team that did: No matter how good or bad we were, all we would have to do to get started are be club/USCA members (I am already), pay a small entry fee (about $600 split amongst four of us) and arrange our own travel/accomodation to the regional playdowns. The winners advance to the national championships, while a few others teams may earn a second chance at nationals in a challenge round. The nationals, of course, come with a ticket to the World Championships for the winners.

In Canada, any team can enter its province's zone playdowns, where it's then on to the regionals, then the provincial championship for the privilege of wearing your province's colors at the Brier or Scotties. There could very well be a group of humble prairie farmers meeting Kevin Koe or Cheryl Bernard in the zones, or an inspired team of underdogs earning a showdown with Martin or Jones in the provinicials.

But for most curlers, the chance to get on the ice, throw rocks for about two hours, then retreat to the warm room for a drink and a few laughs with the other team--win or lose--is a huge prize in itself. And though I was introduced to curling by the Olympics, I've learned to appreciate that without the good sportsmanship, friendly spirit and respect for traditions shown in all levels of the sport, curling would just simply be a few people sliding rocks down a sheet of ice.

[Jordan]

Not that anybody really cares, especially since the "real" Olympics--not the "white people Olympics"-- are about to start but I'm bumping this thread.

Hockey at Sochi 2014 is still in limbo because the NHL and the NHL Players Association are working on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, as the current one is set to expire in September. The Russian players are dead-set on playing in Sochi no matter what the NHL says, but the NHL owners have ridiculous demands to slash both the players' share of profits and their salaries, so the question of whether or not NHL players will play in Sochi has become a minor issue relative to the big money matters.

.

Well, enough about hockey, because we all know the Winter Games are all about one sport: CURLING.

Quick updates on my curling career:

-In January, my team won 1 of 4 games in Tillsonburg, Ontario, and finished out of the money at the bonspiel ("bonspiel" is curling term for what is half-tournament, half-bender). To give you an idea of what kind of a town this is, we drove past Amish horse-drawn carriages on the way there, and our team was sponsored by "Green Lea Ag Centre," a company that distributes and repairs heavy farm machinery. As an aside, the police there are remarkably tolerant--encouraging, even--of drunk driving.

-In February, my team made it to the semifinals of the Eastern U.S. tournament for men's teams with players that have 5 or less years of experience. It was a 50-team tournament; we started with four wins in a row, lost in the semifinal, then won back-to-back games on Sunday to win the "D" event and win the Sinnett Cup, and bring home a sweet trophy that we get to keep for a year and engrave our names on it. We all had only two years of experience, but 5 of our 6 wins came against 5th-year teams. This was the best performance any team from our club had achieved at this tournament since 1981. The organizer of this spiel sent us all a message the next week, encouraging us to keep our team together, saying we will be "a force" in the coming years.

-Next season, which starts in October, we're keeping the team together to play in the club championship league on Monday nights. Two of the skips in that league, Bill Stopera and Martin Sather, made up half of the rink that won the U.S. National Championships and represented our country in the World Championships in Basel, Switzerland this year. We had a huge party at our club watching them play (and nearly beat) Glenn Howard's Canadian rink, and the giant trophy they won at Nationals made a good punch bowl.

Now, my Worlds/Olympics aspirations are still outrageous, but hey; I now play against the current National Champions and guys that have won games at the Worlds. I couldn't do that in any other sport.