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You go, curl!
By Jim Caple
Page 2 columnist
You know your sport has a bit of an image problem when your Olympic press conference, your moment in front of the world's media, your time to document your hopes and dreams and sacrifices, opens with a clip from a Leslie Nielsen movie. Such is life for curlers, who took over from the role of official punchline of the Winter Games from the exhausted ice dancers. Jay Leno has joked about curlers more than Gary Condit, telling his audience just last night that there was a security breach at the Olympics when a security guard fell asleep on his watch "It turns out he was watching curling." Asked whether he had watched his Olympic teammates compete in Nagano in 1998, snowboard medalist Danny Kass replied, "I tried, but I couldn't. Every time I turned on the TV, they had curling on. Too much curling." And skeleton driver Chris Soule told the Magazine that curlers are the geeks of the Olympics, offering as evidence, "At the USOC summit meetings, I saw a couple of them go out during a break and puff a cigarette." Even those guys who want shovel racing to become an Olympic sport, the guys who look like David Wells in a lycra speedsuit, dissed curlers. "If curlers can be in the Olympics," one said, "why can't we?" | |
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