Curling

Curling is one of the most unusual sports in the Winter Olympics. The main objective of the game is to push your colored rock (called a stone) onto a target with four rings (called a house). Each team gets 8 stones to push down the field to land somewhere on the house. At any time you are allowed to use your stone to push your opponent's stones out of the house, removing it from play. Once every team has thrown all of their stones, the team with the stone closest to the middle of the house (called the button) gets one point for each stone on the house that is closer than the other team's.

History
The first recorded account of curling dates back to the 16th century in Scotland, Netherlands, and possibly Belgium. In the year 1560, Pieter Bruegel painted a curling stone, giving us the first look on how curling may have been different then. The first time the sport was refered to as "curling" was in 1639.

=Equipment= The sport of curling requires many different items. The brooms are made of synthetic bristles and are used to sweep the ice in front of the stones as they are going down the field. The sweeping determines how far the stone goes and how much it curls. The more it curls, the slower the stone will go. The shoes are also another piece of important equipment. The shoes are made so that they grip the ice well. However, when the time comes for you to throw the stone, you strap on a piece of teflon to the bottom of the shoes to make you slide. Some shoes have the teflon built in. The stones are the most important equipment in the sport. Without them there would be no game. The stones weigh about 42 pounds. In olympic events, the tops of one half of the stones are red while the other half are yellow. They cost about $400 a piece.