OLYMPICS 2018 12 Feb: CURLING!

I’ve been remiss in mentioning the most exciting sport of all the Winter Olympic events.

Put aside the humdrum sports of figure skating, downhill skiing, etc. No no. That’s not where the real excitement lies.

Here’s something that really deserves attention… biathlon! Ya’ gotta ski. Ya’ gotta shoot. Yep, people racing on skis with gravity mostly fighting you rather than helping you, and then, with heart pounding, hard breathing, maybe with strong wind and snow, you have to shoot with a .22 at a target the size of a DVD with a golf ball sized bulls eye 50m away!  If you miss, you have to do also a penalty loop.

Biathlon: Mercy, tempered by the Truth.

That’s cool.

Then standing.  Very cool.

There is a great video about the rifle.  HERE

Pretty soon we’ll also have Skeleton.   Memento mori!

Of course that pales in comparison with the raw excitement of…

CURLING!

We’ve all, I’m sure, been watching the weekly Curling Night in America for that weekly dose of pathos, thrills and adrenaline.  Now we are at the Olympics.

Lest you miss any of the ACTION a curling specific schedule is available HERE.

Curling isn’t all beer and skittles.   Well… it’s kinda like skittles and there’s probably a lot of beer involved outside the games, but… this Korean curler falls, reminding us all that….

Ice Is Slippery.

This Cancukette has made a boo boo.  She throw the wrong rock, one of the Korean team’s.  No big, however.  They just swapped them out.

Curling: It’s merciful, but truthful.

So, let the curling discussions begin.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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8 Comments

  1. rcg says:

    Yes! I like curling, hockey, and biatholon because the winner is not an opinion. Figure skating makes me nervous like when I see the neighbor lady from my window walking to the post box after a snow, “please don’t fall!”

  2. Charles E Flynn says:

    In an ideal world, Father Z would be at the Olympics, and the NBC reporter assigned to cover curling would be handing the microphone over to him for comments.

  3. APX says:

    I don’t find international curling all that exciting or entertaining, nor do I find women’s curling all that interesting to watch. The real entertainment is the Canadian Men’s Curling tournament, the Brier. I’m convinced that Curling should be one of Canada’s official sports, as we pretty much excel at it compared to other countries. It’s not your typical competitive sports either. It’s one of the few Olympic Sports where Joe Blow down at the Computer shop who also does competive curling on the weekends has a realistic opportunity of making it to the Olympic Games and even winning.

  4. APX says:

    Figure skating makes me nervous like when I see the neighbor lady from my window walking to the post box after a snow, “please don’t fall!”

    Oh, that used to be the best part of watching figure skating growing up. We would watch it as a family. My mom, who put herself through university teaching figure skating, would sit there making critical comments about skaters’ “free leg being all over the place” and what have you, while my brother and I would watch waiting for the skaters to fall during a jump, at which point my dad would join In with, “she was going for a triple lutz, but instead she did a triple clutz”.

    Figure skating isn’t what it used to be since the scoring system was changed.

  5. yatzer says:

    Tragically (curling-wise) I don’t have cable or satellite TV and so am shut out from watching it. I really enjoy it when I get the opportunity though.

  6. Nan says:

    Mom’s cousin, from small town MN, went to the Olympic curling trials one year and lost to the team that went to the Olympics. Curling has been big in that town since at least the 50s.

  7. jaykay says:

    I saw it once when I was in Canada. I was in a pub, strangely enough, in the centre of Toronto, with TV screens on every wall. So on one screen there was the curling, on another the ice-hockey, on another football and on yet another cage fighting. I was actually quite fascinated by the curling, never having seen it before, but it was hard to concentrate on its gentle pleasures with such, ummm, full-blooded (literally, in the case of the cage fighting) action going on all around.

    Mark Steyn did a good take on it recently:

    https://www.steynonline.com/6076/romancing-the-stone

  8. Semper Gumby says:

    One rewarding feature of Curling is that it can mostly be played while holding a beer, scotch, or rosary in one hand. In the 1970s the Holy See could have fielded an Olympic Curling Team with Cdl. Ratzinger, Mother Angelica, and Bp. Sheen. And the Holy See Dream Team no doubt would have made the USSR and East German teams tremble with fear.

    Thanks for the biathlon pictures, a great sport along with cross-country skiing. Heard that a couple days ago the Norwegians took Gold, Silver, and Bronze in men’s cross-country. (Some of us have fond memories of cross-country skiing in the beautiful scenery of Norway during Cold Weather Training. That, and reindeer stew, quinzees, and, er, borderline hypothermia. Anyway, it was very rare to race a Norwegian on skis and win, I never did. Just an aside, the Marine Corps has stored tanks and gear in Norwegian ice caves since, I think, Reagan’s days.)

    Thanks for the link, jaykay, I’ll have to get to that. Mark Steyn can write about the decline of Europe and still work in a few jokes.

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