Curling, Etcetera_ A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game - Bob Weeks [40]
TIME TO CURL
Most sports have time clocks, which tick off the amount of time for the game to be contested. In curling, however, for the longest time (excuse the pun) there was no such thing. Games lasted as long as they lasted. Some contests at major championships stretched to four hours. In one memorable Ontario provincial championship in the 1980s, an evening draw had to be delayed because a game from the afternoon draw was nearing its fifth hour.
In 1983, curling entrepreneur Doug Maxwell came up with the idea of a time limit for curling, but to make it fair, he decided each team should be timed independently. To test out his theory, he purchased a chess time clock and sat behind the ice at competitive games in the Toronto area. Each team was timed for how long it took them to play.
Time clocks were introduced to competitive play at the 1986 TSN Skins Game, and the result was dramatic—teams played to their limits, not wasting any time, especially in the early parts of an end when strategy decisions were less involved.
A few years later, organizers of the 1989 World Curling Championships in Milwaukee were dealing with a time problem. The International Curling Federation integrated the men’s and women’s championships into one event, meaning four draws a day. In order to make this work and avoid curling around the clock, they elected to implement Maxwell’s time clocks, giving each team a specified amount of time to complete their game. The results were a success and most other jurisdictions soon followed, adding time clocks to their championships.
Today, time clocks are a regular part of every major curling event.
ON THE TUBE
The first televised coverage of the Brier was in 1962, when, thanks to a last-minute okay from network executives, the CBC drove its cameras and trucks to Kitchener, Ontario, to cover the playoff game between Saskatchewan’s Ernie Richardson and Hec Gervais of Alberta.
Regularly scheduled coverage of the final draw started in 1973, and it didn’t have a great beginning. In the era before playoffs, Harvey Mazinke’s team from Saskatchewan played so well that the final draw of the round robin—the one the CBC came to cover—was meaningless; Mazinke won the title the previous evening.
CURLING ROYALTY
Two curlers of some note have gone from the ice to the viceregal’s chair. Errik Willis was part of a curling team that competed for Canada at the 1932 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, where curling was a demonstration sport. On January 15, 1960, he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba, holding the office for a term of five years.
In 1986 Sylvia Fedoruk became Saskatchewan’s Lieutenant-Governor, a role she kept until 1989. On the ice, Fedoruk was also a member of the team skipped by Joyce Potter that captured the first Canadian women’s championship in 1961.
THE LONG AND THE SHORT(ER) OF IT
At the semi-annual meeting of the Ontario Curling Association in 1906, officials passed a regulation changing the length of competitive games from 22 ends to 18.
TIMELINE OF THE FREE-GUARD ZONE
The free-guard zone is regarded by many as a rule that saved championship curling. The rule allows for plenty of offence and lots of rocks in play, meaning scoring. That makes the game appealing for fans both at venues and watching on television. Prior to its introduction, curling was a defence game with low scores. Here is a timeline of how the rule came to be:
1986: Russ and Glenn Howard develop a method of practice that is essentially a one-on-one game that doesn’t allow takeouts on rocks unless they are in the rings.
1991: Organizers of the Moncton 100, a lucrative bonspiel held to celebrate the centennial of the New Brunswick city, utilize what is known as the Howard Rule—the first four rocks of any end cannot be removed regardless of where they come to rest.
1992: A modified version of the Howard Rule, dubbed the free-guard zone, is used at the Olympics. It states that any