Canada narrowly eked out a victory over Denmark in Women's curling on Friday night, when Danish skip Madeleine Dupont complained she couldn't control a late shot because of the din.
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Crowd getting too excited about curling
- February 20, 2010 7:51 PM |
- By Erin Valois
Story provided by
By Dan Kaszor, National Post
Canada narrowly eked out a victory over Denmark in Women's curling on Friday night, when Danish skip Madeleine Dupont complained she couldn't control a late shot because of the din.
On Thursday, German skip Andrea Schoepp levelled similar complaints, saying that the Canadians in the audience distracted her from the game.
In most sports this would be standard fare, but in curling there is a centuries-old tradition of gentlemanly gamesmanship. The tradition is so engrained it ended up being the prime focus of the 2002 Paul Gross film Men With Brooms
There is to be silence during each shot and there should be no jeering or cheering. Every game ends with a handshake.
This isn't just traditionalists being put out of joint. A large part of a successful curling team is communication between the skip, the sweepers and the thrower across all 45 metres of the sheet. Communication that's impossible over the din of a noisy crowd.
Newer fans to the game, such as many of those watching at the Vancouver Olympics, don't know about the game's traditions or the importance of communication on the ice, so they cheer.
This isn't a new thing, however. As George Karrays points out in the Toronto Sun, most Olympic games have been a bit rowdy.
Mike Harris won Olympic silver for Canada in Japan in 1998. He remembers his team's very first match, against the host side.
"It was really loud," said Harris, who's in Vancouver with the host broadcasting company. "The Japanese fans had horns and gongs and rattles and it was just constant noise.
The surprising part is that this is happening in Canada. This is a country where getting tickets to the Briar takes a year of planning, where the Roar of the Rings had several teams that could have legitimately competed for Olympic gold.
The fear is that these rowdy Canadians do know that they should be silent and are just ignoring the rules to advantage their own team.
"If they were yelling this much when Cheryl Bernard was throwing, it would have been more fair," Dupont told Reuters.
Of course, all of the complaints being made about the noise will probably quiet everyone down. Canadians hate being thought of as boorish. However, this does imply that the home team may have an advantage if this behavior continues at the 2014 games. Maybe the Russians will bring thunder sticks.
About the Author
- Bruce Arthur Bruce Arthur is the National Post's national sports columnist. A Vancouver native, he has been with the Post since 2001, and a columnist since 2005. He is covering his second Olympics, after the 2008 Games in Beijing. He expects these Games to be slightly less propagandistic, and for China to win slightly fewer medals.
- Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor is a roving sports feature writer with an open-ended beat. He joined the National Post in 2002, and has spent the past seven years bouncing from sport to sport, offering fresh perspectives and delivering unique stories wherever he goes. Whether it has been getting Don Cherry to open up about his love life; George Chuvalo to talk about heartbreaking loss; or racing down the side of a mountain with former Crazy Canuck, Dave Irwin, the veteran Postie chases a story wherever it leads. Before joining the newspaper he was a two-time silver medalist at the National Magazine Awards. Vancouver will be his first Olympics.
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