WINTER OLYMPICS : Curling, New Olympic Game, Enough to Curl Your Curiosity

I take the train from the Stampede depot, which is where the rodeo arena is, to the Barlow stop, which is where the Max Bell Arena is. I do not know who this Max Bell is, but once I get inside his arena, I am hoping that somebody will give me a demonstration of curling, a Winter Olympics demonstration sport. I do not know what this curling is, except for the fact that it is the only Olympic event for which the athletes purchase their equipment from Ace Hardware.

At least I am smart enough to know that curlers use metal-handled rocks and brooms. I am told that when the Canadians first announced their intentions of introducing the Winter Olympics and the world-at-large to the art and excitement of curling, the first volunteers they heard from were American beauticians.

At least I was smart enough to know that curling had nothing to do with hot rollers and creme-rinse shampoos. No gold medals were going to be going to Mister Marcel of Beverly Hills.

My neighbor back in California, Tom Violette, could have answered my ignorant questions about curling, if only I had bothered to ask. He is the main man behind the Granite Club, the biggest curling academy of Los Angeles--where, contrary to popular rumor, club members do not hire servants to do their sweeping for them.

I wonder if curling will ever catch on in Los Angeles. I wonder if hockey will ever catch on. I wonder if winter will ever catch on.

At Max Bell Arena, I run into Ray Kingsmith. Ray runs the rink, which has been completely sold out ever since these slapshot-happy Canadians discovered another use for ice besides hockey, skating and keeping their Labatt’s cold.

Ray, I say, explain this game for me. I’m dumb. I’m American. I’m a Southern North American. We pitch baseballs and shoot baskets and play volleyball on the beach. We ski in 10 or 11 of our 50 states. We surf. We shoot the curl. But, we don’t go curling. We don’t chase rocks with brooms. We throw Frisbees to dogs, but we don’t chase rocks with brooms.

“Sure,” Ray says. “What would you like to know?”

I look in front of me. Side by side, there are sheets of ice, 126 feet long. On each end is a red, white and blue bull’s-eye. In back of each is a Little League-like scoreboard, with innings (“ends,” I later learn) boxed off and numbered 1 through 11. Women in Teflon-soled sneakers are steering 42-pound stones that look like metal kettles toward the targets. Other women are escorting these stones down the ice, sweeping in front of them with tiny brooms.

“Better tell me everything,” I say.

“All right, you toss a coin, and elect to either throw first or last,” says Ray. “Let’s say their lead goes first, so he throws once. Then my lead throws once, like if you and I are playing marbles. Then your lead will throw, then mine will throw, then our seconds, then our thirds, then our skips.”

I nod. I smile.

As far as I can figure, the next thing that happens has something to do with somebody changing the direction of a rock. Ray says: “Now, a good skip will watch that rock, and say, ‘Oh, boy, this ice is really curling.’ ”

I nod. I smile.

Either it means that a rock can be made to move faster or move slower, or move right or move left, or it means that rock beats scissors and paper beats rock, I dunno.

“Look!” Ray says, pointing. “That’s an out-turn.”

I nod. I smile.

“What does the broom do again?” I ask.

“It reduces the friction,” Ray says. “And, it makes the rock go farther, and straighter. They say that good sweeping, by two people, makes the rock travel 20 feet farther.”

“Well, what’s this guy here doing?” I ask, pointing at the U.S. women’s team’s coach, Steve Brown, who is standing in the bull’s-eye during practice. “He’s got another broom, and he seems to be pointing it at something.”

“He’s asking the girl to throw the rock at the broom,” Ray says.

I nod. I smile.

The women throw more rocks. The rocks knock other rocks out of the way. What we have here appears to be shuffleboard on ice, or maybe bocce ball. Except in those games, you rarely see little old Florida ladies or Italian men running alongside their shots with tiny brooms.

I notice a guy with a big broom, one of those straw ones, a 5-footer. The kind of broom you can really sweep up an arena with.

“What’s the guy with the big broom do?” I ask.

“That broom? That’s the janitor’s broom,” Ray says. “He just grabbed it because it was laying there.”

A Canadian journalist, Geoff Fraser, is standing there, shaking his head, pitying the poor dumbbell from south of the border. He grew up curling. There’s nothing weird about it, he says. Weird is in the eye of the beholder.

“Think about golf,” he says. “If you’re a golfer, you can really appreciate a tricky 6-foot putt. If you’re not a golfer, if you’ve never seen golf in you’re life, it’s just a white ball going into a hole.”

I nod. I smile.

“How long would it take a person of average intelligence to understand this game?” it is asked.

“One game,” Ray says.

“One season,” Geoff says.

I go over to Steve Brown, who placed third in the 1986 world championships, and now coaches the U.S. women. Steve, I say, I’m still trying to figure out this here game.

“It’s like a combination of chess and shuffleboard on ice,” he says. “To the casual observer, I know the game doesn’t look very exciting. But once you get involved, it’s tremendously interesting. Trust me.”

I do. I swear.

“You’ve got four people on a side,” Brown says. “One curls the stone, two sweep the stone and one, the skip, or captain, is like the quarterback, and calls the strategy.”

I go over to the Max Bell Arena bleachers, where the four members of the U.S. women’s team are relaxing after practice. They are all from Wisconsin, not California. Carla Casper is a 42-year-old Green Bay housewife. Erika Brown is a ninth-grader from Madison who turned 15 a couple weeks ago. Lori Mountford, 28, is a Madison cashier. Lisa Schoenberg, the skip, who is 30, is a data-control specialist for a DeForest breeding company that inseminates cattle.

“What got you started curling?” I ask.

“Friends,” Carla says. “Friends introduced me to it.”

“It just looked like fun,” Lisa says.

“My grandfather’s 79, and he still curls twice a week,” Lori says.

Erika’s father coaches the team.

“Do people who don’t understand curling kid you about it?” I ask.

“Oh, sure. We get a lot of jokes,” Carla says.

“But not back in Wisconsin,” Lisa says.

“In California, they probably do,” Carla says. “Tom Violette probably hears the jokes.”

“Are Wisconsin’s best four women that much better than Los Angeles’ best four women?” I ask.

“Los Angeles only has four women,” Lisa says.

I nod. I smile.

I wish they all could be California curls.