Olympic Curling Starts this morning …

I mentioned in an earlier post titled “Greetings From The Curling Tag” .. that there are 13 “NOC”’s (National Olympic Committees) competing in Olympic Curling games.

Here’s a little more “Curling 101” information that might be of interest to you!

* There are 13 NOC’s competing in the 2006 Olympics. They are:

CAN – Canada; GBR – Great Britain; ITA – Italy; NOR – Norway; SUI – Switzerland; SWE – Sweden; USA – United States

The above 7 countries have both Men and Women’s curling teams competing. In addition to that, there are 3 additional countries / NOC competing so each Men’s and Women’s have 10 teams in the Round-Robin competition.

FIN – Finland; GER – Germany; NZL – New Zealand; … have Men’s Curling teams
DEN – Denmark; JPN – Japan; RUS – Russian Federation; … have Women’s Curling teams

* Generally, there are 3 sets of starting times for all games throughout the competition …

09:00 Local time (2:00am ET)
14:00 Local time (8:00am ET)
19:00 Local time (1:00pm ET)

If you look at the schedule listing, it starts off with the Men’s curling teams taking up two of the time slots (first and last) and then the Women’s curling teams taking up the middle time slot. This pattern is alternated through out the event, where tomorrow the Women will have two time slots and the Men’s only one time slot .. until the Tie-Breaker matches starting February 21, 2006 .. and other medal matches up to February 24, 2006.

Today’s Schedule – February 13, 2006 Schedule

09:00 (local) MEN’S CURLING
NZL vs SWE
ITA vs GBR
NOR vs USA
FIN vs SUI

14:00 (local) WOMEN’s CURLING
NOR vs USA
CAN vs SWE
SUI vs ITA
GBR vs DEN

19:00 (local) MEN’S CURLING
GER vs CAN
FIN vs USA
GBR vs NZL
ITA vs SWE

The schedule can be found HERE.

Some Other Curling Basics

* The object of the game is to throw your stones as close as possible to the target area in the “house”
* The skip decides on the strategy, and throws last in each end
* Despite any controversy, Russ Howard of Team Canada Men’s team (who throws second) calls the strategy in the house and has final call on all other rock. Brad Gushue has final decision on his own rocks and Team Canada is “Team Gushue” rink!
* The third often assists the skip in making strategic decisions
* The players must release the stone, when throwing, before the red “hog line”
* The official curling rink is 44.5 m (146 ft) long by 4.75 m (16 ft) wide
* The players CANNOT sweep opponent’s rocks between the hog line and the front of the house target (called the Guard Zone)
* Also, the Lead and Second players cannot remove opponent’s rocks in the Guard zone either
* Only stones inside the rings of the house counts as points, The team with the one closest to the center scores a point for every other stone closest to the the center before the opponent’s closest stone
* The stone is made from granite, controlled by a handle, and weighs 19.96 kg (44 lbs maximum). It’s diameter is 30 cm (11.8 inches)
* The path of the rock is swept clean to control it’s projectory, and brushing “Haaaaardd and Haaaaaarrddder’ will most likely make the ice faster or slicker
* Brushing on one side of the stone helps create its ‘curling movement’ towards that side of the rock
* Some argued that those old “whap-whap-whap corn brooms” (my brother’s favorite!) creates a vaccuum and sucks the stone further along the ice.
* Great Britain’s curlers are introducing secret “State-of-the-Art” brooms completely loaded with sensors and a memory card, called the “sweep ergometer’ (i believe) which is supposed to measure how well the team is performing under crucial tasks .. That should be interesting to watch!

Source: Around the CBC site and Curling Blog site