Curling, Etcetera_ A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game - Bob Weeks [13]
• The machine was invented by Harry Mather of London, Ontario, in the mid-1960s. Mather used it at his own club. It was essentially a long blade, about half the width of a curling sheet, anchored on a plow-like device that was powered electrically.The blade could be raised or lowered depending on how much ice needed to be shaved off.
• By 1968, he’d convinced a few area clubs to buy machines that would help improve the conditions. Word spread quickly throughout Ontario, and Ice King became a viable company, selling machines.
• By the mid-1970s, Ice King was selling machines across Canada and had made some improvements to the machine, mostly cosmetic.
• In 1986, Larry Mayo and Fred Veale purchased the company from Mather and looked to improve the popular machine.
• In 1993, Bill Wood made a simple improvement by changing the power source to a battery. No longer was it necessary to drag a long cord along the ice while scraping.
• In 2006, Wood bought the Ice King business from Mayo and Veale. He currently sells four different models—the Prince, the Super Scraper, the Super 06, and the Super 07.
• Ice Kings have been used at virtually every major event from the Canadian men’s and women’s championships to the Olympics.
• Ice Kings are used around the world, and models some 30 years old are still used on a regular basis.
AMERICA’S MAN, BUD SOMERVILLE
Bud Somerville was the first American curler to skip a team to the world championship title, and in so doing he became the unofficial father of U.S. curling. A few facts about the legendary curler:
• He was a gifted athlete but a heart ailment kept him from playing most sports. As a result, he turned to curling.
• He first reached the U.S. finals in 1962, skipping a rink that included his father, Ray, at second, and his brother-in-law Bill Strum at lead. The team finished third.
• In the middle of the 1965 national final against a team from Illinois, Somerville’s pants split up the front, and he was forced to patch them together with tape and a safety pin. Undaunted, he finished out the game, winning his first national title.
• The team became the first American rink—and first non-Canadian—to win the world championship when it captured the Scotch Cup in 1965. After the victory, the team received a telegram of congratulations from President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• He won a second world championship in 1974.
• Somerville’s youngest son, John, died of cystic fibrosis at age 17, and Somerville has raised thousands and thousands of dollars for the research into the disease.
• In 1992, Somerville, at the age of 55, represented the United States at curling’s demonstration at the Olympic Games, becoming that country’s oldest Olympian. He skipped the rink to a bronze medal. He also skipped the team at the 1988 Games.
• When the U.S. Curling Hall of Fame was started in 1984, Somerville was the first inductee.
• His son Tim won three U.S. Championships and represented the United States in the 2002 Olympics.
Curling Quote
“Today I saw a bunch of Scotsmen who were throwing big iron balls like bombs on the ice, after which they cried, ‘soop, soop,’ and then laughed like mad.
I think they are mad.”
—A French-Canadian farmer, circa 1790, relaying his first impressions of curling, as quoted in The Curling Companion by W.H. Murray
THE WRENCH SAID
He is one of the most beloved curlers of all time, and part of the reason for Ed Werenich’s popularity was his penchant for speaking his mind, often saying something politically incorrect but that many were secretly thinking. Here is a selection