73 Days

I know that all of you, my wonderful readers, come to this countdown every day for one reason... Curling! Right? Ok, so curling is not the most popular Winter Olympic sport. But that doesn't mean we should ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist (even though I'm pretty sure that's what NBC does by airing it on NBC affiliates rather than their main channel). A few months ago, some friends and I tried curling on the wii and we pretty much had no idea what we were doing (who ever takes the time to read the instructions on those games). It also ended with some angry neighbors and the police being called, but that's another story for another blog. So, let's take some time to learn the rules of curling so that maybe 73 days from now, we might find that it's actually a fun and interesting sport to watch. (Or not, who am I kidding?)

Now, as we know from yesterday, Curling was originally a part of the Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport, but later became an actual sport in 1998. Curling is played by two teams at a time, with four players on each team. Teams take turns sliding granite stones down a rectangular sheet of ice, using brooms to help bring the stone to rest at the other end of the sheet, in a red circle called the house. After each team throws 8 stones, the team with the stone closest to the center of the house gets a point for each of their stones that's closer to the center than their opponents closest stone. The highest score a team can get is 8 points, and that is considered very difficult. There are 10 ends in each game (similar to an inning). To make this entry pertinent to today, each team has 73 minutes to play their stones over 10 ends.

Meaning no disrespect to Curling fans, researching the rules of Curling for this blog has made me less of a fan than ever, if that's even possible. Sorry. But here's the 50 page rule book for anyone who's still interested.

To end on a not necessarily better, but different, note, the estimated cost for building the Olympic Athlete's Village in Vancouver is $73 million.