What is Ice Curling?

Curling involves the physical curling of a round glass stone to either win a game of curling or draw one’s shot stone, or the equivalent in ice hockey terms. A group of eight men play against each other in a variety of positions, ranging from skip (skipper), vice skip, vice, second, lead, alternate, sweeper and an occasional substitute.

It’s a game that you can relate to if you can imagine a rock shaped like a pinball and curled around the sheet of ice at an ice rink. At times in the game it can be a little more tricky as you have to manoeuvre around the other players who are not as adept at curling as you are and there is some squirming of one’s position as you try to gain a lead of ten stones or so.

And as if you didn’t have enough curling to get a workout in, there are also ski-curling and ice-curling competitions, where you try to curl a rock on ice and receive a direct hit or curve from a metal puck that is bounced off of an ice sheet by a metal cow named “Foley”. These sports are more common at the Olympics.

Ice Curling at the Olympics

Ice curling will be a sport that you can enjoy in the 2021 Winter Olympics that will be held in Beijing, China. Although ice curling is a part of the winter Olympics, it doesn’t have a predetermined schedule in a season as there is in curling. In the winter it can also be considered a sport that can be played by anyone regardless of age.

There are 30 ice curling teams in Canada that are eligible to compete at the Olympics. Their teams are split into two separate groups; men’s and women’s.

Men’s Curling at the Olympics

The qualifying criteria for the men’s curling team is to have won the Canadian Curling Association Championship (known as the Brier). The most successful curling team in history are the last Canadian men’s team to win the Olympic gold medal at the 2021 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.

This was the first time that curling has been played at the Olympics. Two teams are chosen from each of the 10 Canadian provinces and 3 regions. In the qualifying tournaments, they compete for the chance to represent Canada in the Winter Olympics and qualify for the Olympic Games.

Men’s Ice Curling at the Olympics

In ice curling, there are three events: men’s, women’s, and mixed. In the women’s and mixed curling, the players are divided into teams of two men and one woman. Each team has three stones that are curling around a sheet of ice that is coated with about four inches of ice in order to create an ice surface that has a level surface.

When a stone is curling, the edge is curled around the ice by the player to create a curl or spiral. In ice curling, the stone is designed to get on the button and for a draw stone, the stone is placed in the corner of the circle that is created.

Mixed Curling at the Olympics

Mixed curling will also be a sport in the Olympics in the 2021 Winter Olympics. In mixed curling, one of the curling stones is used in a rotation of two, while the other is used as the shot stone. The players on the mixed curling teams are allowed to curl one stone and either receive a direct hit or they can curl it themselves.

There are two types of ice curling, recreational ice curling and competitive ice curling. Recreational ice curling is where one can curl in a curling rink with one or more other curling teams. This type of ice curling does not carry a national sanction as there are no official teams in Canada.

The competitive ice curling is a sport where a person can curl on the same team as their family or friends. For competitive ice curling, teams consist of nine people in total that can compete against each other to determine the winner. In ice curling competitions, there are typically one women’s and one men’s team that play. At this point, there is a tie on the tie-breaker which is decided on by a coin flip.

So if you ever get a chance to curl ice in a curling rink and you want to try out ice curling, give it a go! You might like it!