On thin ice, the new brooms sweeping world of curling
IT used to be considered a genteel if rather dull sport before it fired up the nation’s imagination at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
Then, viewers across the country stayed up late to watch the all-Scottish women’s GB curling team sweep to gold in a thrilling victory over Switzerland in Salt Lake City.
And now the sport is in the spotlight once again after cutting-edge advances in broom technology have rubbed the game’s authorities up the wrong way.
Curlers have been in uproar over the apparently unfair effect that some high-tech brooms – using new materials and stiffer bristles – are having on the usually sedate sport, which originated in Scotland in the 16th century.
Worries about the future of curling even prompted the World Curling Federation (WCF) – the sport’s Perth-based governing body – to hold a three-day summit in Ontario, Canada, to avert the looming crisis threatening the game.
As a result, the WCF will introduce rules to crackdown on the so-called ‘frankenbrooms’ and regulate future broom technology.
The new rules also state each player should have their own brush and swapping of brushes between players should not be permitted. They also recommend that the technique known as ‘dumping’ – where a sweeper deposits debris in the path of the stone to change its course – be outlawed.
Debbie Knox, the deputy skip in the 2002 women’s GB Winter Olympic team, welcomed news of the crackdown. She said: ‘There were a lot of disgruntled people last year with the way the sport was going because of the brushes.
‘I do agree that it should be to do with the delivery skill, rather than how they can manipulate the stone through sweeping.’
The WCF decided that sweeping should never be allowed to ‘slow a stone down or make a stone “fall back” against the curl’ and that ‘sweeping should have only marginal ability to directionally impact a stone’.
They added: ‘The sweeping summit tested almost 50 brush models supplied by six equipment manufacturers. It was quickly determined that certain combinations of materials and constructions proved to be far too effective in the hands of top sweepers of either gender.’
Under the new rules, only brushes made from a ‘single fabric from a single source’ will be permitted in professional curling. The fabric should be ‘a woven product with no external waterproof coating or artificial texturing’.
Graeme Thompson, performance director of Stirling-based British Curling, said: ‘It should be more about the skill of the thrower rather than the technology of the brush.
‘People felt that technology was taking too big a role. We look forward to the proposals being implemented in the next season.’
Bruce Crawford, head of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, which governs the sport in Scotland, said: ‘We need to keep the sport clean – we need to keep the sport focused on athletic ability, not equipment.’