Rocks on Ice

Hard-core U.S. sports buffs might scoff at the game of curling -- that is, if they've even heard of it. Imagine grown men playing a sort of shuffleboard on ice, with brooms and a big rock. One man slides the rock down the ice and his teammates charge ahead of it, sweeping furiously as it approaches a series of concentric circles with a bull's-eye in the middle. Even the name sounds slightly nutty. Wasn't that something women did to their hair?

Just don't say that to. the Scots, who invented the game almost 500 years ago. Or to the Canadians, who have made it their No. 1 participant sport, with 750,000 players spread across the country. In the old days, stout Scottish farmers slid their rough-hewn stones across the frozen lochs, nipping liberally on the "whisky punch," long a part of curling tradition as "the usual drink in order to encourage the growth of barley." The game was carried to Canada in the mid-1700s by Scottish soldiers who melted cannon balls into 60-lb. "irons" for a frolic on the frozen St. Lawrence. Pioneer farmers ringed hard wood blocks with iron or used lard buckets filled with cement.

Today's curlers slide a 44-lb. block of highly polished granite that looks like a wheel of cheese with a handle on top. And the game has evolved into a test that combines the finesse of golf with elements of lawn bowling, horseshoe pitching and pool--plus a dash of chess strategy. A rink (four-man team) scores one point for each stone it keeps closer to the bull's-eye than any rival stones. An expert curler can slide his stone more than 100 ft. down the ice with a spin so fine that it will curl tightly between two enemy stones and settle on the bull's-eye. He can also send his stone thundering into the target to scatter enemy stones like tenpins while leaving his own team's untouched. The idea of sweeping is to melt a thin layer of ice by friction, thus making it easier for the stone to slide, and strong-armed broom men can add as much as 12 ft. to a slide.

Last week the game's best brooms were in Montreal, as teams from eight nations gathered for the tenth world championship. With the whole country watching on TV, Calgary's Ron Northcott rink took aim on the title that Canada has lost only twice--to a U.S. club in 1965 and to a Scottish team from Perth last year.

For a while it looked as if that same Scottish quartet would repeat. The defending champions swept through seven preliminary rounds, including a 10-5 win over Canada. But the finals were a different story. No sooner had bagpipers led the two teams onto the ice than Canada swept off to an early 5-1 lead, finally brushing off the Scots, 8-6. And some day, say the Canadians, the world championships may really include the whole world. The host nation in every Olympics has the right to add one new sport. If Canada ever gets the Winter Games, everyone knows what that sport will be.

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