Winter Olympic Sports: Short Guide to Curling

In the build up to the winter Olympics we thought we will give you a short guide to some of the winter sports that will be contested and more importantly, winter sports that the UK could possibly win a medal in! These are also sports that you can participate in whilst travelling when you purchase our winter sports travel insurance.

The first winter sport we will look at is Curling, widely described a ‘chess of ice’

In 2002, Great Britain’s woman curlers claimed the country’s first winter sports gold medal in 18 years (Torvill and Dean in 1984), overcoming Switzerland with a 4-3 victory. Victory again at the 2006 winter Paralympics looked possible; however the team lost out to Canada on the final push.

 Aims for 2010 games is to have won medals in 3 consecutive winter games and to have won medals in both the Olympics and Paralympics. 

WHAT IS CURLING?

Taking place on a 44.5m long area of ice with target areas marked out on both ends. The target areas are similar to archery or shooting targets laid out on the floor under the ice and are 6ft wide.

Similar to lawn bowls, the aim of the game is to slide your stone (a dense granite weighing 19.1kg), closest to the centre of the target.

To slide the stone, a player pushes off  holding the stone from a rubber mat and have to release it before crossing a set line called the ‘hog line’. After the release, two sweepers brush the ice to make it smoother to make the stone go further, or they leave the stone so it slows with the friction of the rougher ice. The sweepers’ skill lays in the ability to judge the speed and to get it to finish in the centre of the target called the ‘tee’. Sweepers may only sweep between two tee lines.

TYPES OF SHOT

1.)        Raise – aim to knock one of your teams’ stones into the house

2.)        Hit – Aim to knock the opposing teams’ stone out of the way or out of the house

3.)        Draw – aiming to get the stone into the house

HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED

Each team has 4 players and a game consists of 10 ends. To play an end each player of a team pushes two stones so 16 stones are pushed in total. The first two players for each team can not displace the other teams stones if they are in the ‘guard zone’, an area before the house which can be used to protect the teams stones already in the house.

To win points the team with a stone closest the ‘tee’ wins. A point is awarded for every stone that is closer to the tee than the opponents.

The team with the highest score after 10 ends have won.

 

Do you like winter sports? Let us know if there are any particular short guides you would like us to blog.

If you like winter sports you will probably be planning to travel this winter, so make sure you are covered with winter sports travel insurance from click4quote.com