There’s a strong belief in the sport that it’s the players throwing the stones, not the sweepers, who should have the strongest influence on individual shots.
My first thought upon reading that sentence was, "Isn't it a team sport?"
My first thought upon reading that sentence was, "Isn't it a team sport?"
That's the question the curling world is asking right now. And to make the whole thing murkier, they're able to make this fundamental change not by adding technical wizardry, but by subtly altering something that is already part of the game. Exploiting a flaw in the game, as it were.
Imagine if somebody invented a hollow aluminum baseball bat that could hit the ball much farther than a wooden bat could.
I used to play in a men's modified pitch softball league where, even with the half-drunk middle-aged men that were playing, when the DiMarini composite bats came out, guys were using them and ripping line drives that could take your head off. Had to downgrade to a squishier series of softballs that didn't transfer as much of the force from the bat.
> Aesthetically, wooden bats are generally preferred to metal, both for their traditional appearance and satisfying traditional "crack", far superior to alloy bats' hollow "ping".
That seems to fall a bit short of "neutral point of view".
Though baseball gloves might serve similarly, their evolution was mostly before my time:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-invention-of-...
This article suggests that some of the techniques developed with the new broom materials are useful with traditional materials: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/canada-is-using-lasers-and...
If it merely removes challenge I would not favor it. To call something sport, the skill and effort of the human competitor(s) must be the primary determinant of success.
A long time ago a friend used to quip "it's not a sport unless steroids help".
By that definition, I don't think curling qualifies. But perhaps someone who actually has participated can chime in. E.g. does having more physical strength help in the initial push given to the rock?
Where it's more important is sweeping, up to this point at least. Teams like Jacobs have shown how much of an advantage powerful sweeping is - the range of accuracy is much wider for them compared to me throwing the same hit with two club sweepers. That's the second part of the equation that most people miss in thinking that curling isn't a strength sport.
Of course now, you don't need to be nearly as strong to achieve the drastic changes in rock movement that you did before, and that's one of the concerns.
Curling has recently undergone a similar transformation that other sports have gone through over recent decades: the sport has become a lot more athletic. Of course, the sweepers and the thrower play important roles in the outcome of the shot. But with newer sweeping technology, the need for the curlers to be as athletic has diminished, making the training that people like Brad Jacobs and such have done effectively meaningless.
Curling is much like golf; its a game thats supposed to be a mental battle as much as a physical one. And not just in terms of strategy, but also in terms of consistency and focus and effort.
Well, the impression I get from reading the piece is that this is supposed to reduce the thrower's contribution to nearly zero. That's not a nonsensical complaint in the face of the question "isn't it a team sport?"; they're trying to preserve a role for one of the team members.
You could just as easily replace the thrower with a controlled machine launch (in fact, the broom testing mentioned in the article already uses such a machine), and you'd have a pretty similar sport, but they don't seem to want to.