My wife’s grandmother broke her ankle curling (trivia: her husband was supposed to swim for the Netherlands in the Olympics, but WWII got in the way).
At a bonspiel I went to a few years back one skip was heading down the ice after the 6th end and his slider foot slid out from under him (going forward). He snapped backwards and cracked the ice with his head.
Very bad concussion.
Well based on recent posts, it looks like you’ll never know for sure…
And dammit, I just moved away from DC last summer. I never knew they had curling there! (It’s pretty damned unlikely they have it anywhere close to where I am now: south Arkansas.)
I can imagine the chilling horror stories exchanged between curlers over soft drinks late at night. Kinda like what transpired between Quint and Matt Hooper in Jaws.
P.S. Did his head damage the ice very much?
Was a special exception made for the Afghani women’s track team a couple of years ago? From what I’ve heard, most reasonably-fit women from the developed world could have beaten them.
The first people to have this idea wasn’t the Jamaican bobsled team. It was a team of American businessmen who lived part time in the US Virgin Islands who formed a bobsled team. The ringleader of this stunt, Danny Bergner, lives in Santa Barbara now and I’ve known him for a few years. He actually consulted to the Jamaican team.
Forming the team was easy, these were four well connected businessmen and they were basically told, “if it doesn’t cost us anything, go for it.”
Getting to the Olympics was tougher. You needed to acquire enough points by placing well enough in various international competitions to qualify for the Olympics. These four guys travelled around to various events, ones in particular where they knew most of the big players weren’t going to attend, and eventually managed to qualify.
Danny’s girlfriend (now wife) got to carry the flag in the opening ceremony. They actually finshed better than last place too, something like third or forth from last. According to Danny, the atheletes only party after the closing ceremonies is epic. Lots of nakedness.
I can tell you don’t know any curlers 
There’s a reason I took up curling. And I played for a team whose motto was ‘The worst that can happen is we get a free drink.’
Hey. I never said I was good at it.
So he swam for England? And if so did he make it all the way there?
The blood ruined the pebbling. Damn near shut down the centre ice. Added at least an extra second before I could get a hold of my rum and coke after an end. 
Actually the bad injuries tend to happen to the newer curlers. Its hardly a killing field but it takes a while to get use to running and hopping on ice when wearing a teflon bottomed shoe.
Boo! Hiss!
I had something similar happen to me, but fortunately without the concussion. Was sweeping my tail off, bumped into a rock, lost my balance, and went right backwards. I don’t think I actually was out, but some of my teammates thought I had been. As a measure of how serious they thought it was, they refused to let me drink any beer after the game, because of concerns that the alcohol and a possible concussion would be a bad mix.
If curlers won’t let you have beer, things are bad. :eek:
Ankle injuries are also a problem, if you get your foot inbetween a stationery 40 lb piece of granite and a speeding 40 lb piece of granite. 
Lascelles Bown, of the 2002 Jamaican bobsled team, just won silver as brakeman for the Canadian two person team.
Do they take passengers?
I’d pay good money to watch that.