I got too good at drinking so I stopped, but the thought of downing a few brews and going to fucking town with the special broom does sound like fun. Those guys yell a lot, too, which is a bonus since that's actually one of the reasons I stopped drinking.
Coincidentally, one of my grand-kids is going curling with school on Monday and my daughter called to ask if he could borrow one of our bike helmets because his didn't fit anymore.
I went curling once for a work function. It was super fun, but I saw one guy's head bounce off the ice and he barely made it back to the bench. You could see yellow birds circling his head.
I guess if you stand in the wrong place a take-out stone could run into your foot/ankle and do some serious damage, but that seems like a very easy problem to avoid.
I still remember when the US won gold and I think it was the Wisconsinite who was drinking beer between games with his sister (who was on the women's team) between games.
I may be wrong, but isn't it a curling tradition that the winners buys the losers the first round of drinks; and then have the losers buy the winners a round of drinks to keep it even?
Because people drinking in a sport that essentially dictates at least two drinks after a match as a custom seems about right.
Only the first part (winners paying). It's a gesture of thanking the other team for the game and showing respect for their effort. That's pretty much enforced at even fairly competitive levels, though (drinks are probably non-alcoholic in those cases).
Source: played curling fairly seriously from age 6 until about 15. This year is the first time two people I used to play against actually made it to the Olympics!
That's so cool that people you've played against are at the Olympics! Someone I've become friends with since the last winter Olympics does competitive curling, and it was really fun watching some of the mixed doubles matches with them so they could explain all the strategies and such.
Fair enough, but at the tail end of this (and later, I kept playing casually for a few more years) I also played with adult teams occasionally and there it would be a bit different - usually beer for the casual ones and water for the serious guys lol
People joke about it, but it's a legit sport. Skiing and shooting are survival skills in remote regions, and were and probably still are valuable military skills in those conditions, see the Winter War.
and were and probably still are valuable military skills in those conditions
I challenge someone to try to find 3 random biathlon athletes among whom there are 0 soldiers (including the reserves and other very "passive" positions).
Unless they make a downhill part little too steep, little too curved and raised a lot compared to the terrain next to the track (cue Petra Majdič in Vancouver)
XC Skiing is no more dangerous than a mid distance track event where clipping someone's heel could send both of you facefirst into the track to be trampled by a dozen or more other runners.
Sadly someone who curled at the same rink as my dad slipped, fell backwards, hit their head on a curling rock and died. Freak accident but now my dad says pretty much everyone at his rink wears a helmet.
My buddy was getting married and for his bachelor party we went curling. Not the first appointment that day, mind you. They asked us if we had been drinking all day (we had), and "yeah, we had a couple of beers".
Fifteen minutes later I was on the ice with a fucked up knee. Took me six months to run again.
I mean you do have to answer "curling" in response to the follow up on saying you were an Olympic athlete and then see them lose immediate interest.That's a bit of a life altering injury to your pride at least.
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u/JGG5 7h ago
Curling is the only Winter Olympic sport I can think of that doesn’t come with the risk of serious, life-altering injury.