Is the sociable sport losing its soul?
TORONTO — Curling, the sociable sport, the sport where etiquette demands the winner buys the loser a drink after the game, is undergoing a subtle attitude change at its highest level, according to Mary-Anne Arsenault, one of Canada’s most decorated curlers.
“It used to be that you’d walk into a locker-room and everyone was friends,” the veteran said earlier this week. “And now, people barely look at each other. It’s all ‘game-face.’”
Arsenault won five Canadian championships — including a run of four straight — with a rink from Nova Scotia that also won a pair of world titles a decade ago. She is back at the national event this weekend, leading Nova Scotia’s entry into the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, in Moose Jaw, Sask.
Curling was a new Olympic event when Arsenault, on a rink led by Colleen Jones, began stocking her trophy cabinet with major prizes. The sport has made five appearances at the modernday Olympics, each appearance seeming to create new stars, and higher stakes.
More money has been invested. Teams are expected to have personal trainers, nutritional plans and access to sports psychologists. Both TSN and Rogers Sportsnet carry the sport nationally — TSN is set to air more than 65 hours of live coverage from the Scotties beginning on Saturday — as those at the top creep closer to becoming professional.
Beyond the social aspect, other curlers have raised questions about accessibility, and the increasing gulf between the elites and the rest of the field. Curling is changing, they say.
The stakes? Maybe curling’s soul.
“People are just a little more intense and really want to win,” Arsenault said. “There’s a lot on the line; there’s a lot of money that people invest, and time, and I don’t know if they figure it gives them an upper hand to snub you or if they’re just into it. It’s hard to say. I’m not in their heads.”
Curling has become a major draw on television. Last month, an all-star skins game from Banff, Alta., was held on the same weekend as the NFL conference championships. The ratings did not suffer with the competition: The women’s final between Rachel Homan and Olympic champion Jennifer Jones drew an average audience of 579,000 viewers despite being up against the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks.
Brad Jacobs, the skip from Northern Ontario, earned $65,500 for a weekend of work on the men’s side. Homan, from Ottawa, led her rink to a payday worth $52,000.
Rogers Sportsnet carried the provincial playdowns leading into the Scotties and the Brier, the Canadian men’s championships. The network is also investing in a curling tour, with five events on the schedule this year with plans to expand, raising the possibility of a full-time curling tour — with $2.5-million in prize money to be made available in 2016-17.
“Canada’s appetite for premium curling coverage continues to grow at a great rate,” Rogers Sportsnet president Scott Moore said in a release issued last month.
And with the money and exposure comes competition. Elite curlers are expected to be in shape, to be available for more practice time, to be flexible enough to take time off work through the winter. Curlers have moved provinces to play for different rinks.
“Those days of going into it for the fun, going into it just to try, going into it just because it has always been a sport where four guys from Timbuktu could get together and go, those are over,” said Colleen Jones, the decorated skip from Nova Scotia. “The number of teams who want to compete in the ‘A’ side of it, to be the elite of elite, is just going to go, ‘it just doesn’t look like that much fun.’”
It has become more of a business, said Stephanie Korab, the third on the Newfoundland & Labrador rink competing at the Scotties. Travelling to events costs money, and finding sponsors to help cover the cost of that travel takes time.
“Do you have the time and energy to do that?” Korab asked. “It’s very difficult.”
The Olympics are at the core of the change. Korab is married to Jamie Korab, who was a member of the Brad Gushue rink that won gold at the 2006 Winter Games in Italy. Since that victory, the team has had a Newfoundland highway named in its honour, as well as streets in a subdivision — you can buy a house at the corner of Jamie Korab Street and Brad Gushue Crescent in suburban St. John’s.
“I definitely think the Olympics has changed curling, but in a great way,” said Jennifer Jones, who went undefeated in Sochi.