Curling

[Zzzptm]

Watching the Scotties Tournament of Hearts right now through the Curling Canada YouTube channel. I've been a fan of the sport ever since it failed to help me fall asleep one night when I was on the road. I had no idea it would be so engaging - describing it as "chess on ice" is quite fitting.

The athletes are also part-time in this sport, so they all have day jobs, lives, families, babysitter struggles, and other life events that mean they all have some great sportsmanship and friendships on and off the ice. It's fun to see them open up a lunch hamper at halftime to eat bananas and candy bars for their recharge. I'm hard pressed to find a sport I like with as high a percentage of likable personalities in it.

Back to the sport itself, watching the precision and skill of the best teams is incredible, most especially when the player skill in delivery and knowledge of the physics on the ice leads to amazing shots that completely change the scoring outcome for the round.

[Vyn]

I know exactly jack shit about curling other than the few times I've seen ten seconds of it on television. I don't need another interest. Stop it. 

[Zzzptm]

I know exactly jack shit about curling other than the few times I've seen ten seconds of it on television. I don't need another interest. Stop it. 

Hey man, it's still sports!

[Jack the Stripper]

I had no idea it would be so engaging

Or so metal 

[Vyn]

Ahahaha, awesome!

[Zzzptm]

Totally totally awesome!

And that Swedish rink had some great form, even with the older style brushes.

[Charger]

I love curling. My favourite winter sport by far...just wish there'd be more of it on tv..not just during the olympics...

[Zzzptm]

I love curling. My favourite winter sport by far...just wish there'd be more of it on tv..not just during the olympics...

For that, I strongly recommend the Curling Canada YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/curlingcanada/videos They have next-day posting of competition that aired on Canadian sports network TSN. I'm wrapping up the 12th match in the Canadian women's competition, the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, as I type this, which gets me up to 6 days of the competition, which runs through the 28th. The men's Brier starts on 5 March. Mixed doubles after that and then there's the men's world championship. That takes me into April, two months of great curling fun.

There's also the World Curling TV channel for, well, world competitions: https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldCurlingTV/videos

The European players also show up in the Continental Cup games, that's how I got introduced to Anna Hasselborg's team, such great competitors!

Doing some more searching, I found a Russian-language YouTube channel with full matches: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-5xGCr0IeSFuI2bmLcjEgg/videos

[Zzzptm]

https://www.youtube.com/user/SwedishSportChannel/videos

Time to find out if I can follow curling in Swedish!

[Zzzptm]

Meanwhile, the Scotties are wrapped up and we're in for the Brier. The Koe-Gushue match at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfOeZLBoaqU was great, and the MacDonald-Fournier match was just outstanding to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGQ0-kp17-k MacDonald-Fournier had lots of rocks in play with some excellent planning and throwing on display.

[Charger]

It seems that I need to explore this thing called internet bit more then...yikes...I've been missing out...all this time I thought it was only for forums and porn...but there's curling too! HotDAMN!

[Zzzptm]

It seems that I need to explore this thing called internet bit more then...yikes...I've been missing out...all this time I thought it was only for forums and porn...but there's curling too! HotDAMN!

Wait until you see the cat videos!

Curling Canada and World Curling are two of my favorite YouTube channels this time of year.

[Zzzptm]

Tim Horton's Curling Trials have kicked off.