Curlers gather to solve broom dust-up
KEMPTVILLE, ONT. Say you’re a curling brush. Do you have a future in the sport?
You may not know that today, but you should know by September, when World Curling Federation members meeting in Stockholm are expected to vote on rules based on data being collected during this week’s “Sweeping Summit” in Kemptville, just south of Ottawa.
Some brands will receive the thumbs up, but others undoubtedly will fall short of approval. Their fate lies to a large extent in the hands of 11 of the world’s best curlers and National Research Council technicians who are using laser technology and even a “robot” rock-thrower to measure the impact of more than 50 different brushes on the path of rocks as they slide down the ice.
Participating athletes on Wednesday sounded a chorus of support for not only the testing being conducted by the non-partisan NRC, but also a belief that curlers throwing rocks should have more influence on shots than those calling lines and brushing the stones.
Less perfect play is the goal, the thinking being that an occasional miss might produce more exciting competition.
“I think the sport has become too easy for the top-level players,” said Niklas Edin, a Swedish skip with two world titles and 2014 Olympic bronze on his resumé. “Now it’s up to one miss or one made shot determining the winner of the game, and I think that margin is not good enough to see the consistency of the (rock) thrower.”
Emma Miskew, the third for Rachel Homan’s Ottawa foursome that won Canadian women’s titles and world bronze and silver medals in 2013 and 2014, said the athletes on the ice at the North Grenville Curling Club had made up their minds.
“None of us would be here if we liked it the way it was. We wouldn’t be here trying to test and figure out what’s approved and what’s not. But you really shouldn’t be able to steer a rock down the sheet. That’s not curling.” .
Another Olympic-champion skip, Brad Gushue of St. John’s, playfully accepted blame for the summit and the controversy that had led to it because of his team’s role in popularizing what curlers describe as “directional sweeping.”
It was entirely within the rules and wasn’t hidden from anybody, Gushue said, and by mid-season everyone on the upper levels of curling competition was doing it.
“But having said that, it can go too far and it has happened in other sports. It has happened in golf, where the technology just went too far and they had to turn it back,” said Gushue. “It has happened here. We have to kind of rewrite the rules just a little bit to bring it back to where it was.”
None of us would be here if we liked it the way it was. ... You really shouldn’t be able to steer a rock down the sheet. That’s not curling.