The culture is as distinctive as the rules. Curlers call their own infractions, concede when a game is beyond saving rather than play it out, and traditionally buy the opposition a drink afterwards, a code written down as the Spirit of Curling and still printed at the front of the rulebook.
Sweeping briefly melts the frozen droplets, called pebble, that cover a curling sheet, creating a microscopic film of water that reduces friction under the stone. Two things follow. The stone travels further, by several metres if it is swept hard for its whole journey, and it curls less, holding a straighter line.
Pick two names from this sport’s all-time list. The larger number in each shared stat is highlighted.
| Stat | Niklas Edin | Anette Norberg |
|---|
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The culture is as distinctive as the rules. Curlers call their own infractions, concede when a game is beyond saving rather than play it out, and traditionally buy the opposition a drink afterwards, a code written down as the Spirit of Curling and still printed at the front of the rulebook.
Sweeping briefly melts the frozen droplets, called pebble, that cover a curling sheet, creating a microscopic film of water that reduces friction under the stone. Two things follow. The stone travels further, by several metres if it is swept hard for its whole journey, and it curls less, holding a straighter line.
The hammer is the last stone of an end, and having it is worth roughly a point at elite level because you get to react to everything the opposition has already done. It is decided before the game by the last stone draw, where each team throws to the button and the closer average wins, and after that it goes to whichever team did not score in the previous end.
Because it is released with a slow rotation, two or three turns over its whole 30-metre journey, and that rotation makes it drift sideways by about a metre. The strange part is the direction: a clockwise-rotating stone curls to the right, which is the opposite of what a spinning ball does on a table.
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