Canada curling, my brief fandom thereof

Recently I've been listening to Slate's really good sports podcast, "Hang Up and Listen."  I came to it because I've liked Stefan Fatsis on NPR and in print (Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic are both terrific books.)

They've done a couple of nice segments on the Winter Olympics and one of them (I think it was Josh Levin) mentioned that lots of the sports shown by NBC on the Olympics just aren't shown very well.  The sliding sports (luge, bobsled er, bobsleigh, skeleton) are simply a series of cameras at different parts of the track.  You see pieces, but not the whole.  They do a better job with the big ticket sports like figure skating and alpine skiing and even manage to turn biathlon into something of a story.

I have, as some of you probably (don't) remember, been an every-four-years fan of curling for a little bit now.  I really like watching it.  NBC did figure out, bless its corporate heart, that curling couldn't be highlighted and it couldn't be narrativized.  What it could be was shown in its entirety with experienced curling commentators.  On CNBC and USA.  Ok, so I have to live with no primetime curling.  But I've got dish and a dvr.  Dish always gives you CNBC and USA.  It's like a woman I know says about grits in South Carolina.  You don't have to ask for them, they just come.

Anyway, there's a lot of curling on, actually.  Several hours every day.  Since I don't actually have several hours to turn over to the sliding granite stones every day, I had to figure out my own approach to watching.  By the by, I love that I got to do that.  That's what's wrong with NBC's coverage on primetime.  I've got to take what they give me.  That's all well and fine the night the show the women's long program, but less so during ski jump after ski jump or, heaven forfend, ice dancing.  For curling though, I make my own rules.  I set my own schedule.  How to do that, though?

Don Duguid and Colleen Jones (the curling commentators) are enthusiastic about the sport to such a degree that it's hard to sort out what to be excited about and not, so, at first, they weren't much help.

I happen to be an American who finds the Olympic American hometown rah rah thing a little annoying.  I also suspected that the American curling teams weren't very good.  (Quelle Suprise!  I was right).

I first came across curling during the Salt Lake City Olympics (sorry, Olympic Winter Games) where I watched the Great Britain women's team take gold.  I toyed with rooting for them.  I guess I should acknowledge the given that I'd be focusing my watching on women's curling.

Then, I hear (from Colleen--who was ready to guide me after all) about Cheryl Bernard and her Canadian team.



It seems that Canada lets its best club teams compete against one another to represent the country in the Olympics.

Cheryl and company (Susan O'Connor, Carolyn Darbyshire, and Cori Bartel) were good enough to make the trials, but no one expected them to win.  They were, by all accounts, the 4th best performing team in Canada.

They did win the "Roar of the Rings."  Thus were they Team Canada.

Then there was all this drama about their not having enough international experience and should Canada change the system and blah blah blah.

Cheryl and her team came to Vancouver (their club is in Calgary) and beat pretty much everybody in the preliminary rounds (they lost once to China) and then won their semi final against Switzerland by which time everyone had stopped talking about whether they should have won and whether to change the rules.

I watched most of their games.  I read up on curling and how to make the stones (a complicated process) and even looked to see if there were SoCal curling clubs (yes, but in Orange County, which isn't close enough).   Still I'd like to touch a curling stone.  And wear those cool slidy shoes.

Cheryl and her team were, in a fundamental way, my Olympics.  Honey and I have watched lots of primetime.  It was curling I looked forward to.  I rooted for them.  I imagined them singing "O Canada."  (Side note:  Canada has a MUCH better national anthem than we do.  It's rousing, it's singable.  I'd take "God Save the Queen," too.  I can't hit that high note in ours and neither can you, so don't act like you can).

I followed the controversy over the supposed swimsuit photos she took.  Worried about her cold.

I wasn't the only one.  Canada went a little curling mad.  They wore those curling hats. People stopped Cheryl on the street and asked for her autograph.  Guys held up signs asking to marry her.  Her husband borrowed one of them.  They were in the gold medal game.

Then Friday afternoon they faced Sweden.  The Prime Minister of Canada was there.  So was the King of Sweden.  I was too.  It was a state mandated furlough day for me.  Curling and furloughs go great together.

There, too, was the all the international and Olympic experience the people of Canada had worried about in the person of Anette Norberg, Sweden skip.

It was a tense match.  Colleen even said so.  Sweden looked like they would win and then Canada came back and stole two ends.  (Basically they won points they shouldn't have).  It looked set for my girls.  Cheryl needed to make one shot in the 10th (and last end).  She missed it and Norberg tied the game.

Then, in the (extra) 11th end, Norberg made a spectacular shot at the end and Cheryl couldn't match her.

I was heartbroken.  Not as much, I'm sure, as Cheryl was.

You can look around the web and you will find lots about how she messed up and lost the gold.  There are Canada fan sites and curling sites.  Newspapers and blogs.  There's a lot of talk about choking.

For me, it wasn't about any of that.  She was an underdog who got everyone on her side.  When she lost she walked (ok slid) over to her team and they embraced.  Most of the pictures of them on the podium with the silver medals around their necks show their dissapointment more than anything else.  She seemed to handle it all with class.

As I watched her Friday afternoon, I remembered why I still like sports sometimes.  I remembered that sports should always be about winning and losing and heartbreak and triumph.    (Not money or contracts or steroids or whatever.)

Cheryl Bernard broke my heart today.  Two weeks ago I didn't know her name.

Cheryl did manage a smile over the silver medal at the end of a lovely two weeks of curling.  Thanks for letting me follow along.