How do I love thee, curling? Let me count the ways

The Winnipeg Free Press Online Edition – How do I love thee, curling? Let me count the ways

Tue Feb 21 2006

In the Doug House / Doug Speirs

I NEVER expected it to happen, but I met the love of my life while sitting in the den watching the “passionate” Winter Games from Turin, Italy.
Her name is curling.

Let’s get one thing straight — I cannot stress too much the depth of my love for curling.

I cannot stress it too much because I don’t want bands of outraged curling fans brandishing torches and pitchforks to descend on my house and re-enact the fiery final scene from Frankenstein.

You see, there was a time when I wasn’t quite sure about my feelings for curling. It is even remotely possible that I once foolishly thought curling combined the thrills and chills of shuffleboard with the high drama of watching a janitor sweep up at your local high school.

I’ve even heard it cruelly suggested that curling is the only game — with the exception of golf and, perhaps, NASCAR — where you are expected to fire up a cigar and clutch a cocktail in your free hand.

(Sound of torches being lit and pitchforks being purchased from local Home Depot outlets.)

Look, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a proud Canadian. I stop at Tim Hortons every day and I’m routinely rude to Americans — especially if they aren’t carrying guns and I’m pretty sure they can’t hear me.

If Canada had a landscape gardening team in the Olympics, I’d be there cheering them on to a horticultural gold medal.

I will not mention the fact that I do not know how to skate. OOOOPS!

(Sound of more torches and pitchforks.)

The point is I’m ready to rock the house because of these Games, which are dishing up a steady diet of televised curling for breakfast, curling for lunch and curling for supper. I’ll send a thank-you card to CBC and TSN.

And apparently I’m not the only heretic who has seen the light and just can’t spend enough time in front of the tube with his newfound love. Although these Games are getting thumped in the ratings by American Idol, millions are still tuning in to curling, no doubt hoping to get a glimpse of the Canadian women’s matching ankle tattoos of the Olympic rings.

Fans in Turin have been going ga-ga over the Italian skip, a cowboy-hat wearing, tobacco-chewing, spiky-haired hipster named Joel Retornaz. Bakeries in the city even decorate their windows with loaves shaped like curling stones.

And fans on the Internet, when they aren’t firing off marriage proposals to female curlers — such as U.S. skip Cassie Johnson of Bemidji, Minn., and the entire Russian rink — are crashing curling websites.

If you can imagine, curling was as high as No. 3 on the MSN.com search engine, coming in just behind Dick Cheney (who had to shoot a guy to be No. 1) and “assassin spiders,” a recently discovered major killer bug.

Olympic curling was even the topic of conversation when I got off the couch to attend a funeral last week. Only in Canada, eh?

I mildly suggested to some old friends after the service that I was toying with the idea of a column in which I might poke fun at curling.

Most of them looked at me as though I had just suggested I wanted to light my hair on fire and beat the flames out with a track shoe.

“Do you have any idea how many curlers there are in this city?” one friend asked in bewilderment.

“Maybe you should make fun of lugers instead — there can’t be too many of those guys.” A former football teammate, however, dared to suggest that curling wasn’t a real sport. “If it was a sport, there would be curling video games,” he explained. “And trading cards.”

He was quickly converted when I showed him my picture of Team Russia.

My burgeoning love for curling was cemented when a friend who’d flown in for the funeral joined me at 2 a.m. to sip scotch and watch Canada’s Brad Gushue lay a beating on Great Britain.

My friend — a pilot and therefore a great expert in curling and affairs of the heart — suggested we compare the excitement level of Olympic curling to whatever fare happened to be on Sex TV during the wee hours.

As it turns out, curling and the sex channel both featured lots of people incoherently screaming like pirates.

“ARRRRRRR!” the curlers screamed on TSN. “SWEEEEEEEEEP!”

“URRRRRGH!” they screamed on the sex channel. “BLEEEEEEP!”

Our verdict? Call us geeks, but we unanimously decided that curling is a heck of a lot more exciting than sex.

Now, I just have to figure out how to break it to my wife. doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca

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