Gavin and Allison Fall Down: Curling Edition

Welcome to Gavin and Allison Fall Down, a recurring series where we try Norwegian winter sports and recount our shortcomings for your amusement. In this inaugural column, we bring you curling.

We came across the Trondheim Curlingklubb while doing research on activities we could do with our friend Peyton when she came to visit, with the goal of finding things that we would all be unlikely to do in the United States. Since Peyton was enthusiastic about the idea, I contacted TCK, which was very accommodating about setting up a lesson for “Team USA.”

The headgear is padded in the back for safety.

We were met at the club by our instructor Gaute, who is in his late 20s and has been curling for twelve years. Since three people (Gavin, Peyton, and me) was not enough to have a competition, Gaute combined us with a group of six Norwegian girls who were also new, but had the advantage that they were, you know, Norwegian.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with curling, it is a sport in which players slide polished granite stones on a sheet of ice towards a circular target area, also called the “house.” Each team has eight stones. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the center of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones. A few other key points:

• Players wear one shoe with a smooth sole (for sliding) and one shoe with a grippy sole (for not falling). In order to throw your stone, you push off of the “hack” (a foothold device similar to a starting block in track and field) with your grippy shoe and slide with your sliding shoe.
• After a stone is thrown, players sweep the ice with a broom to make the stone travel further. It’s less like a witch’s broom and more like a padded Swiffer.
• The team captain is called the “skip”; the skip decides strategy and directs which way to curl your stone.  We were not good enough for the skip to be relevant.

(As an aside, please take note of Gaute’s pants. From what I’ve gathered, when it comes to curling, the flashier the clothes, the better, and Norway has a particular reputation for excellent kits. See examples here, here, here, and here.)

Gaute had a set of drills for us to try before we played a game. It became immediately clear that these Norwegian girls had a leg up on us when we started the first drill, which was to practice sliding across the ice. This is accomplished by putting your weight on your sliding shoe and pushing off with your grippy shoe. The Norwegian girls were naturals at this, which is hardly fair since I assume most of their life has been spent sliding on ice.

The next drill was to practice sliding out of the hack, first with just your broom, and then with a broom and a stone. The way this works is you put your grippy shoe into the hack, which gives you some leverage. Then you go through this wind-up exercise with your sliding shoe (“forward, up, back, push”) before launching off in a low-lunge position, which you hold until you come to a stop. One critical element here is that your arms support a lot of your weight by pushing down on the stone and the broom, forming a tripod of stability.

As you can see below, I did not master the tripod right away. The Norwegian girls were far and away the most natural at the sliding. Gavin was also pretty good. Peyton was also better than me but just barely. I was definitely the worst. Case in point:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fcpn5RKJTc&w=560&h=315]

Gavin — who can clearly be heard laughing in the above video — has requested that you compare and contrast it with this one:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8VrxPrkkiA?start=12&w=560&h=315]

I did manage to get it right though.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd0g3jK_Fyo&w=560&h=315]

Here are Gavin and Peyton too:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oWdpenx_UA&w=560&h=315]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEnPcWAMj_M&w=560&h=315]

The next skill to learn was sweeping. As far as we could tell, sweeping doesn’t do anything. This may be because it seems to require a lot of force to do it right, and if you aren’t super comfortable with sliding on things, is hard. It’s also awkward to keep yourself at the exact same speed as the stone. The one thing we became good at judging was whether we needed to do any sweeping at all, because we had a habit of launching the stone hard enough that it went through the house and out of play. Gavin was the best sweeper of the whole group, probably because he was the only dude and had the most force to exert.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5zQSJh2TOQ&w=560&h=315]

Our performance and level of intensity should be compared with that of the experts.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYcYaUBaEeI?start=20&w=560&h=315]

With our fundamentals intact, Gaute organized a round-robin tournament consisting of us and two teams of the girls. We are proud to announce that Team USA beat BOTH Norwegian teams – the first was a strong 3-0 victory, and the second was won when I took out the other team’s game-winning stone with our very last stone. Not that I’m bragging or anything.

Curling is super fun! TCK strongly encouraged us to come back whenever we want, and I hope we do. Thanks Pey for your enthusiasm in trying it with us!