Curling Sweeping: History & Importance

They were super brooms and Wouter Gösgens was amazed. It was October 4, 2015 and the Dutch curler, who is now captain of the national team, was seventeen years old at the time. During a major international tournament in Basel he played in the final against the team of Brad Gushue, a great in curling. A highway is named after him in Canada.

Gösgens: “He constantly changed brooms, which is completely unusual in curling. Everyone naturally wondered why he did that, what was so special about those brooms.”

Gösgens remembers that some of the stones that Gushue threw did not make the well-known curvature, the ‘curl‘ to which the sport owes its name. “Not much later it turned out to be correct what Gushue had been claiming for some time: there were new brooms on the market that allowed you to deflect the stone earlier and harder. Sometimes the stone no longer even showed any curvature, which was completely unprecedented.”

Gushue won the tournament. He won almost everything in those days. He used the super brooms to, paradoxically, have them banned.

To understand this, a brief explanation about the sport is required. The Olympic tournament starts this Wednesday evening, two days before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan.

In curling, a thrown stone never goes completely straight: if you aim for the middle, you will miss. And then the sweeping. This is intended to slightly warm the top layer of the ice cream. This creates a membrane of water that reduces the friction between stone and ice. The effect: the stone slides longer. Because the stones seek the path of least resistance, even their direction can be manipulated somewhat by sweeping. It is not without reason that this endless sweep attracted educational commentary. In fact, for many Dutch people the word ‘curling parents’ is better known than the sport.

In the Netherlands, the word ‘curling parents’ is better known than the sport

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Paintings by Pieter Bruegel

But despite its obscurity in countries like the Netherlands, the sport is centuries old, considerably older than popular sports such as baseball, football and basketball. People have been playing a similar game since at least 1565, curlingas seen in two paintings from that year, both by Pieter Bruegel. A written source, found in a Scottish abbey, mentions the sport even earlier, in 1541. Admittedly, that game does not yet involve brooms, but it does involve flat stones with handles that players push towards a goal.

Once with brooms, Canada grows into a superpower in the sport. Compare it with the Dutch world dominance in long track speed skating. While the Netherlands has won 21 percent of all medals in that sport at all Winter Games, Canada’s percentage is 24 percent of all curling medals.

So when 2015 arrives, Brad Gushue, the strongest Canadian at the time, is used to winning often and winning big. The greater the surprise when that series of victories suddenly comes to a halt. He even starts losing to teams he spent his life beating. Is it his fault? Unlikely: he sees how opponents make the stones do things that he believes are virtually impossible.

When he also starts losing to Koreans on the other side of the world in the spring, he understands that there is more going on than tactics and team play. “I went to take a closer look at what those Koreans were doing that they didn’t do before.”

Gushue says this in a strong podcast, made two years ago by the Canadian CBC. Title: Broomgate: A Curling Scandal. The six episodes tell the story, we hear creator John Cullen say, “about a broom that almost killed the sport.” What makes the podcast tense is that the creator is partly to blame. He once played at a high level and brought the first super broom onto the market.

Those are the brooms used by the Koreans. The head of those brooms was made of particularly stiff material, something new, with a coated, waterproof synthetic top layer on the cover. As a result, it processed the ice like a kind of advanced sandpaper. In plain English: what used to require endless scrubbing could now be done in a single targeted swipe – and with greater effect too.

‘Control with a joystick’

With new skating suits come faster times. With better brooms, Gushue fears, curling will no longer be possible. Because anyone who seriously trains with the miracle brooms will be able to place the stones wherever they want. “It’s like controlling the bricks with a joystick.”

That’s not why he spent much of his life curling. He proposes to his colleagues and the World Curling Federation to ban the super brooms, but they do not respond. Colleagues feel accused of foul play. Then he decides to play competitions with the brooms himself. He wants to show the curling world what is possible with this. That is what Wouter Gösgens witnessed as a seventeen-year-old. Just like the rising tensions between the world’s best curlers. The podcast shows well: there was nothing left of the friendly atmosphere in which top curlers usually traveled around the world to play their matches.

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Something had to be done and in the spring of 2016 the most important players and association directors will meet in Kemptville, Canada. In this ‘sweeping summit‘ fifty different broom heads and sweeping techniques are examined, with the help of the National Research Council of Canada and the use of a robot. It continuously plays stones with the same speed and in the same direction. And then just sweep.

The strange thing was: there were hardly any rules before. There was hardly any development in the playing material for more than a hundred years. Photos from the first Winter Games in 1924 in Chamonix show players with straw brooms, call it a classic witches’ broom. Photos from the 1950s show the same brooms. It wasn’t until the 1980s that things changed, with a kind of foil over the ends of those classic brooms. Then come the mops we see now, with a flat, manoeuvrable brush head.

Prohibition on braking

After three days of testing, a solution is found that everyone accepts. All broom heads must be packed in the same plastic case. The thing is made of a strong woven nylon, called “Nylon Oxford 420D”, it is durable and, more importantly, behaves very consistently on ice. It doesn’t matter how high-tech the broom head under the case is, with the case it loses all magic.

Referees promise to strictly monitor the use of the case.

Everyone satisfied. And yet, explains the director of the Dutch curling association, the genie is out of the bottle. Jiska Kortekaas: “In Canada, curling is a really big sport and so manufacturers and players continue to look for new materials and techniques. For example, we recently received a new rule from the world association: a ban on the knifing orientation.”

This means a hard, sharp movement with the broom to slow down the stone. That is not the intention: sweeping is intended to move stones further.

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And the brooms? Wouter Gösgens, now 27 years old, explains how some manufacturers came up with performance-enhancing brush heads about two years ago that are effective even with the obligatory yellow cover on them. Fifteen top players then came up with a proposal for ‘fair play in curling‘. The Canadian press already wrote about “broomgate 2.0Gösgens: “The discussion about material will probably never completely stop.”

The discussion about materials will probably never completely stop

Gösgens just missed qualifying for the Games at the last qualifying tournament in December. The counter for Dutch participations therefore remains at zero. Gösgens is in hot water. For a moment he even considered not watching the Games on TV. “But time matters a lot. We are now two weeks further and yes, it is my sport, right?”

Gösgens has been playing and training at the only official curling rink in the Netherlands, in Zoetermeer, since he was ten. There are five other lanes, but they are also used for skating, which makes the ice unsuitable for high-level curling. So-called clinics mainly take place on these courts. These are usually company outings.

Unfortunately, these have not yet translated into more regular players, says Jiska Kortekaas. She now hopes for the Games. “Even people who have never seen a match will discover how exciting it can be. It is simply wonderful to see how in the end game players can throw everything into disarray using the other’s stones. Curling is truly a spectacular sport.”

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