I love watching curling

By: The Yank | Published Sunday, February 21, 2010, 7:00 PM | Updated Friday, September 9, 2011, 9:31 PM

Curling. There are a lot of detractors out there, especially in America. Many people seem to believe that curling is not a sport and doesn't belong in the Winter Olympics.

Niall O'Dowd is one of those people. O'Dowd says Curling is the silliest sport at the Olympics, that it's essentially a couple of people sweeping in front of a 'kettle lid' sliding along the ice.

I disagree. I'm a big fan of the Winter Olympics. I'd be hard pressed to choose my favorite sport at the winter games (hockey doesn't count because I watch that regularly). Curling would be up there, however.

Sure the curlers may not be the athletic specimens that you'll find in other disciplines, but sports is about more than at athleticism. If athleticism was all that mattered there would be few sports other than triathlon and the NBA.

I've never curled and I knew nothing about it until I started watching it after it became an official Olympic sport. Since then I've grown to appreciate the competition among the various nations, the skill and strategy involved and, something I really like, the sportsmanship of the competitors.

Sure, it looks like a middle-aged guy could compete at or near the top level, but you know what? Golf looks a lot like that to me too. How old exactly was Tom Watson when he came within a whisker of winning the British Open last year? That doesn't bother me.

One other thing I like about curling is that it's not a race against the clock and, more importantly, it doesn't involve judges. Curling is merely a contest between two teams pitting their wits against each other. I can only imagine that those American detractors are being badly served by NBC, but from what I read that's a complaint of fans of just about all Olympic sports.