Q: Why are there separate men and women Curling competitions?
After all, the strength, agility and stamina requirements of the sport are easily achieved by both. Why not have them compete against one another?
I think I know the answer, and the men would lose every time!
A: Because the women are so much better at sweeping…
Participating in the Olympics is costly and requires sometimes creative ways to raise money and awareness of you, your team and sport.
Curling is one of those Olympic sports that is ALWAYS looking for sponsors.
Curling also involves shouting instructions at your teammates and calling out the line and speed of the stone you just threw.
One often shouted term is “Hurry Hard”.
Hurry Hard means for the sweepers to well, sweep faster and harder.
When watching curling, it is pretty easy to hear them shouting this out from time to time.
So, a few USA curlers were sitting around one day just shooting the breeze and trying to think of new ideas for raising money. After all, they had already come up with the idea of having people paying $30 to test your skill against Shuster and the Olympic team. Pretty cool, but they needed more in order to go to the Olympics.
When out of the blue, someone joked that “hurry hard” would be a good name for a condom.
The idea was then mentioned to Kodiak chairman Dan Field, who had a connection to MCAP, and the program took off from there. USA Curling informed the U.S. Olympic Committee of the project before announcing it.
“HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention is a noble cause and the USOC, much like the IOC, certainly supports sport playing a role in tackling these and other terrible afflictions,” USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said.
A worthy cause, and partnership.
However, I quite possibly will never look at the curling stone the same way again.
You can find out more about the sport of curling, the athletes and other sponsors here.
You can ummmm “help raise awareness” here.
Maybe it’s me, but this year there seems to be a big deal being made about crashes.
Lots of athletes crashing, and lots of officials making changes to courses as a result of these crashes.
Perhaps having the death of the Georgian Luger happen even before the games officially start set a more tragic and reactive tone for the entire Olympics but the point I wanted to make was that athletes have always , from time to time, crashed and gotten injured but I do not seem to remember officials making so many changes to courses as a result of people crashing.
This has happened to the Luge, the downhill and slalom courses, even some of the ice competitions, though that was mostly because the cheapo Zamboni they originally bought could not fix the ice appropriately.
I think all of these course crashes and “fixes” is a result of the industry of sports competition and athletes constantly pushing the limit of physical and technical ability.
Olympic athletes are special. They are the best of the best and as such have this drive and determination to constantly push themselves and their sport to new and higher and more dangerous limits.
This drive in turn makes the “sport” constantly look for ways to challenge the athletes.
Perhaps this year the sport has pushed the athletes more than it should have.
But still, I don’t seem to remember officials making as many changes as they have this year. I am reminded of the old Wide World of Sports intro which shows the “agony of defeat” and thinking, “did anybody shorten the ski jump” as a result of this incident?
It seems that the only Olympic sport to not have been pushed to the limit and changed as a result of crashes is Curling.
Now I have to admit, we have been watching the Curling competition. I also have to admit that for such a none contact and physically demanding sport, it has gotten A LOT of air time. We have enjoyed watching it because it is intriguing to watch the strategy of the the sport and the technique involved.
But just like everything else, someone somewhere has found a way to push curling to the limit and prove that it is a sport of not only skill and strategy but of strength, speed and physical ability.
Strangely enough, I found these people pushing the limits of curling not on NBC Olympic coverage but on the Weather Channel and Colbert Nation.
So in the spirit of Fun Strip Fridays, I end this post with out takes of video which pushes Olympic coverage and interviews to new limits.
The Weather Channel proves that Curling is indeed a contact sport!
And Colbert pushes the coverage of the sport to new limits in his video spot.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Exclusive – Curling Team Tryouts Outtakes Pt. 2 | ||||
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Of course, leave it to Colbert to take a sports interview to a level, a spot, where no other interview has gone before.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Exclusive – Zach Lund Outtakes Pt. 2 | ||||
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Fumbled Returns 