Curling, But With a Russian Twist: An alternative to the winter sport

By: Christian Lengkeek

What sport is the perfect combination of beauty and athleticism, speed and strength, the mind and the body? I had looked far and wide for this sport, and I had thought after much searching, I had come to a conclusion: curling.

If you don’t know what curling is, here are the basics. Men and women contort their legs like a pretzel, sliding down a rectangular ice rink holding a rock that looks like a tea kettle. They then release it while two other players scrub the ice with brooms and finally watch it bang into a bunch of other rocks.

The goal is to get your rocks closest to the center of a round target painted at the end of the ice or in technical terms, the curling sheet. All I can say is: where is there a better spectacle of athletic talent in sports?

For years I lived under the delusion that curling was the sport to end all sports, until I stumbled across Russian curling. The Russians are known for improving games. They took Roulette, a boring game, and made it exciting. In Russian curling, all curling rules remain the same…except for one small change. Instead of small rocks, it’s played with cars.

It’s quite simple. Eight or nine people push the car down the ice while one person sits inside and steers. The car then crashes into all the other cars that have already been shoved down the ice. All strategy remains the same; the closest car to the center wins, which means crashing your car into other cars is essential for clearing the ice.

The sport is new. The first ever organized tournament was held in 2017. This means the sport has a ton of room for growth. I am excited for the first time it will be held at the Olympics. I am even more excited for the first time people try to play it with Lamborghinis and Ferraris. And my wildest of dreams is that maybe, just maybe, Eastern University will start the very first collegiate car curling team in America (perhaps in the world).

Let me remind you that we do have ponds that freeze, and a lot of cars on campus look like they have already been used for curling.

Sources: USA Today