<\/p>\n
America and the Winter Olympics have a weirder relationship than Khloe and Lamar. <\/span>The Winter Games provided our single biggest moment in Olympic History (the Miracle on Ice) but yet when Subway wants to do an Olympic ad they could only come up with a star from the Summer games, Michael Phelps (perhaps they thought his recreational activities fit in well with the snowboard crowd.) <\/span>I think part of the awkwardness comes from the fact that America isn\u2019t a year-round winter wonderland the way countries like Norway or Canada are; most Winter Olympic countries are whiter than a 90s NBC sitcom. <\/span>To these countries shooting a rifle and then skiing a long-distance seem like the ultimate athletic endeavors, meanwhile American wonders why we can\u2019t do the shooting portion from a helicopter. <\/span>Even weirder is the fact that America\u2019s most dominant winter athlete (Shaun White) comes from California, and Southern California at that. <\/span>But yet there is one Olympic sport that speaks to us, that rises above all others, that is so uniquely fascinating that it is impossible to look away: curling. <\/span><\/p>\n I dare you to watch curling for 3 minutes and then change the channel; you can\u2019t, you\u2019ll be hooked. <\/span>I am actually proud to say that this past Sunday I watched 9 solid hours of curling (taking breaks only for the NASCAR race and the epic USA\/Canada hockey game.) <\/span>In fact the only portion of the Olympics that I have watched that didn\u2019t involve an American team was the epic United Kingdom\/Canada match (as much as I wanted to cheer against Canada during these entire games I couldn\u2019t help but be moved by the crowd singing \u201cO Canada\u201d so loudly that the game had to be stopped, it turned out to be the turning point of the match.) <\/span>But even to Americans, curling is so popular it\u2019s practically got its own channel during these games: CNBC (the \u201cC\u201d stands for curling<\/em>!) <\/span>But ultimately there is one question left: <\/span>why? <\/span>Why is curling so fascinating? I\u2019ve got a few theories: The Weirdness There can be little argument that curling is unlike any other sport. <\/span>Yes, I know what you\u2019re about to say: \u201cSport? <\/span>Curling\u2019s not a sport.\u201d <\/span>And look- you\u2019re not wrong- but my definition of sport will always have 3 requirements 1) there needs to be a winner and a loser, otherwise it\u2019s not a competition it\u2019s a way to keep a 9-year-old entertained. 2) All participants need to understand they are involved (sorry horseracing but nothing\u2019s going to convince me that you\u2019re a sport, short of Mr. Ed telling me to take him to Place in the Seventh.) <\/span>3) There can be no judges (figure skating you\u2019re out– if Johnny Weir\u2019s involved I will need to choose my words better. <\/span>Anything that doesn\u2019t have a standardized scoring but instead is a judgment call isn\u2019t a sport.) <\/span> Good, now back to curling being unique- unique like watching a slow-speed car chase unique- you just can\u2019t look away. <\/span>Would curling still be interesting if it were on every weekend? <\/span>Probably not. <\/span>But bowling wouldn\u2019t suddenly be fun to watch just because it was on for only two weeks every four years. <\/span>We\u2019re talking about an Olympic event that has brooms involved, actual brooms! <\/span>This would be like someone telling me there\u2019s an Olympic event that centers around riding a couch down a waterfall, how would you not watch that? The Barroom Element I know some people say that it\u2019s just shuffleboard on ice. <\/span>And you know what- if shuffleboard were an Olympic event I\u2019d watch that too. <\/span>If darts were an Olympic event I\u2019d watch that- except that Olympic bylaws prevent anything that England is good at from ever becoming a sport. <\/span>But that\u2019s what makes curling so great- how many Olympic events are actually great barroom drinking games? <\/span>Downhill skiing? You\u2019d die if you\u2019re doing jack-and-cokes between runs; but curling? <\/span>I\u2019m sure that booze only improves someone\u2019s curling skills- in fact nothing can convince me that the US team wasn\u2019t drunk this whole time, except for the fact that they sucked. <\/span> Which speaks to the true power of curling- when\u2019s the last time you watched an Olympic event that the US isn\u2019t good at? <\/span>Did you watch the Nordic Combined? <\/span>Did you even know that the Nordic Combined was an actual event- I\u2019m willing to bet you thought it was something you saw on an infomercial. <\/span>But we love curling, despite the fact that the US teams are a combined 4 and 1276 (seriously how many curling matches are there? <\/span>I\u2019ve literally watched the women\u2019s team play at least twice a day since \u00be of the flame was lit.) <\/span> The cuties There\u2019s one element I\u2019d be remiss in ignoring: Curlers are cute. <\/span>They don\u2019t have Beach Volleyball watchability but they certainly have your friend\u2019s cute sister watchability. <\/span>Thankfully the Cold War is over so I can point out that the Russian team was top-shelf, even half the German team was quite impressive (although the other half looked like Disney villainesses, I think one of them was going home to eat Hansel and Gretel.) <\/span>They\u2019re not Lindsay Vonn bending over in Spandex on the cover of SI, instead they\u2019re wholesome, cute, a little too<\/em> bundled up. <\/span>Except for the Danish curler who posed naked\u2026ah, not that I went looking for those pictures. <\/span> The Strategy However, attractive participants can\u2019t cover up a terrible game (RIP Lingerie football league) which suggests that there is something about curling that is actually entertaining. <\/span>Aaron Sorkin (playwright and stoner) believes that America never truly embraced hockey or soccer because we like plays, set pieces, breaks in the action where everybody pauses and holds their breath- basically we want bottom of the ninth, we want 4th<\/sup> down, we want 24 seconds left down by 2 points. <\/span>We want the drama to build rather than the nonstop pace that soccer and hockey provide. <\/span>And when you think about sports like that, suddenly curling\u2019s appeal makes more sense. <\/span>It\u2019s like chess for moderately intelligent people. <\/span>We love the strategy of trying to score two or hold on for last stone in the next end. <\/span> There are a lot of questions that have arisen during these Olympics: what was that young lady doing on her knees in front of that snowboarder? <\/span>Why does every Olympian\u2019s profile picture look like a DUI mugshot? <\/span>Why does NBC continually choose to humanize athletes from other countries when they know I\u2019m only watching to cheer against them for not being American? <\/span>And of course, why curling? Ultimately even the most die-hard curling enthusiast understands that like POGs and Dane Cook, curling has just been a fad and two weeks from now we\u2019ll move on to something else. <\/span>But it still begs the question: why did curling get a half-month as our National Pastime? <\/span>Could cute athletes really propel a quirky sport from our barrooms to our living rooms? <\/span>Or were we just watching curling to apologize to the people who have to live in the Dakotas the way we all cheered for the Saints to apologize for Katrina? <\/span>Maybe we just watched it because it was the only thing NBC didn\u2019t bother to tape-delay, maybe NBC was pushing it on us the whole time- one of the US curlers does look suspiciously like Pam from The Office. <\/span> But for now, fare well curling, I\u2019ll miss you these next 208 weeks when you won\u2019t cross my mind. <\/span>But next Winter Olympics we\u2019ll be reunited\u2026unless shooting things from helicopters finally becomes an official event. <\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leaky Pipes breaks down the American obsession with curling as only he can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}