Curling considers customs as sport looks to draw attention outside of Olympics
Feb 17, 2022; Beijing, China; John Shuster (USA) during mens curling semifinals during the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games at National Aquatics Center. When Beau Welling was a high school senior, he heard about an odd sport in which people whirled a 44-pound granite block across a sheet of ice, sweeping it towards a target. As he flipped on his television to watch Olympic curling, he hardly gave it a chance.
“I saw rocks, brooms and ice and thought, ‘This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in the Olympics,’” Welling said. “And I kind of forgot about it. ” Fourteen years later, during the Salt Lake 2002 Olympics, Welling, the president of the sport’s global governing body, found himself in a similar situation.
But this time, with curling as a medal sport, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the screen. With the help of a co-worker, he said he began to understand the nuances and his interest in curling skyrocketed. Each Winter Olympics, the over 500-year-old sport of curling draws tremendous attention from casual fans in the U.
S. , but many don’t stay engaged after the Games. At the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, 1.
6 million Americans tuned into the U. S. -Sweden gold medal match in the middle of the night, according to Sports Media Watch.
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