An Olympic gold medalist says: 'I don't think it's remotely dumb.'
Before you deem me a “heretic” yet again, please know that curling is already a land of contrasts. There is not one single agreed-upon format for the sport. When it debuted at the Olympics in 1924, the matches were 18 ends each. People were so appalled by this that curling got omitted from the Olympic programme for 74 years. When it returned in 1998, matches had been reduced to a mere 10 ends. Even today, though,on whether that’s the correct number.
In a standard Olympic curling match, each of the 10 ends takes around 15 minutes to finish. There’s a one-minute break when an end gets completed, except for after the fifth, when there’s a five-minute break. Each team also gets a single one-minute timeout per match. Add it all up and a 10-end curling match takes around two hours and 45 minutes. That’s only four minutes shorter thaninto two hours and 49 minutes, then they could certainly fit an entire curling match into, say, 90 minutes.
“It would be a mad dash,” he told me via Twitter direct message. “This is essentially chess on ice , so having to call shots that quickly would REALLY put pressure on players and cause a lot of misses/unforced errors. And panic .”First: What did I tell you about that “chess on ice” thing? Second: Panic and pressure are indeed super fun to watch. That’s one of the main reasons they need to curl faster.
“I don’t think it’s remotely dumb from a marketing standpoint,” he said. “Would it be a gimmicky version of the sport? Absolutely. But would a fast paced, frantic version of curling be entertaining and great for television? I’d say yes.”Not everyone agrees with us. In a February 2021 article in the Curling News, Kevin Palmer
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