I seen where a Russian had been found guilty of illegal doping in the Olympics for curling. Why? How could that possibly help him? I can get for speed, strength, stamina, these things can give an edge. But for curling? You’ve got one pushing an oversized puck, on ice for Jesus H. Christ’s sake, doesn’t even have to lift it, and two others that sweep for a brief time of what, 10-15 seconds? Then you get to f#*&^%g rest. Assuming you need to.
That’s one defense that’s being offered for these people:
The Washington Post, though,. has this to say:
My question is: “How does a Doper benefit from Curling?”
For pretty much any activity where you are competing to be the best in the entire world at something, there’s going to be some sort of drug to give you a shortcut. Darts, pistol shooting, curling, whatever.
I’m pretty sure if I tried to give my kitchen floor a heavy scrubbing for 2 hours, I’d end up feeling it by the end, even if I took a couple short breaks. Now do it twice a day everyday for a week.
Darts?
Well, greenies I suppose.
There’s an Olympic shooter who got caught using Beta-blockers to calm his nerve and steady his shot.
Bill Werbeniuk was noted for using alcohol - under medical advice - to counter a benign tremor. He became famous when he successfully claimed the cost of this as tax-deductible.
Just last week I was an instructor at a “learn to curl” event that my curling club was holding. The brand new curlers on my sheet were two short for a full team, so I volunteered to sweep for both teams. And, of course, being brand new curlers they mostly threw light. So for an hour I’d madly sweep a stone down the sheet, then run back to the front of the sheet to madly sweep the next stone down the sheet, then run back down the sheet, …
That was exhausting!
Not all banned drugs are for reasons of strength or endurance. I don’t know about what this Russian caught for, but there are drugs like Adderall that improve concentration and focus. That could definitely be helpful for a curler.
I wonder what this will do for Russia’s reputation and ability to take part in future competitions. Russia as a country was already out of these Olympics, although lots of athletes believed to be clean were allowed to compete under the OAR designation. Now one of them has failed a drug test. How hard is it going to be for Russians to compete anywhere?
If it helps, new players tend to naturally deliver the stone a little further as their balance and confidence improves.
Well, if you smoke some dope, it makes more sense.
sevenwood, since you sometimes instruct in this stuff, hoping you could clear up something else about curling that I don’t understand. Why do so many start sweeping almost immediately? The way I understand it, sweeping can melt the ice and give them perhaps another 10’ if needed. This also helps guide the trajectory if they need to go in one direction or another if I’m not mistaken. It just seems to me, the sweepers really wouldn’t know that early on if it needed more length or not, or would they? Do some get so good they can really sense this stuff that quick?
If I might jump in, yes, the sweepers can tell right away if the stone is light (going to come up short of the called shot), about right, or heavy. The more sweeping they do, and thus the sooner they start, the more effective it will be. As they come down the ice, they’ll fine tune that prediction to try to get the perfect distance.
The way it tends to work is that the sweepers are walking next to the stone and are well placed to judge the speed of the stone. Lots of them will use stopwatches and time how long it takes for the stone to travel between two lines, and use that to predict how far it will travel. You’ll sometimes hear them call out numbers to their skip; 1 is a high guard, 4 is the top of the house, 7 is T line (which goes across the center of the house), 10 is back of the house.[sup]*[/sup]
The sweepers can judge the speed, but it’s hard for them to judge the line. The skip is in the house and the stone is coming right at him. He can judge the line, but not the speed. He takes that number he gets from his sweepers and chooses how much sweeping is needed to bring the stone where he needs it.
- That’s the way I was taught it, and I’ve heard some of the teams doing it, but it may not be a universal system for everyone.
You can time how long it takes for the stone to move from the back line to the hog line. If you throw 3.40 seconds that likely puts you in the House. You’ll see the front end have stop watches but they do simply learn the feel of the delivery.
Ok, but you can’t deny, there comes a time, when curling wanders into watching people shout at rocks.
It helps you see around the stones, man.
Robot Arm, thanks for jumping in taking time to explain. Just didn’t think it possible to know so quick. I wasn’t aware of some using the stop watches either, but only watched this for a few minutes.
Krushelnitckii (that’s how it was spelled on his back) was accused of using a drug that enhanced workouts when engaged in body-building. Presumably he thought he had stopped early enough not to have any residue. He has admitted using the drug, so you can forget about denials from members of the Russian team.
Curling was once an activity best carried out beer bottle in hand. No more. There was a team (IIRC, it was Kevin Martin’s) whose lead and second were called Huffin and Puffin because they often ended a shot completely out of breath. They worked at it and had less than a minute rest before having to do it again.
I believe it was in the Nagano Olympics in 1998 that an American curler got special permission to use a normally banned drug that was medically prescribed. They never said what it was, but I always assumed it was something like a beta blocker that you cannot safely just stop taking. When I was weaned from a beta blocker (my heart rate was too low), it was a two month tapering off regime.
I assume anti-depressants are a major benefit to curlers. As I understand it, the early death rate among curlers is quite high. The vast majority of these deaths are categorized as suicides, although there is a great debate over whether or not boring yourself to death should be considered suicide.
You’re welcome. It’s tough to get it right, but these guys have trained and practiced for years.
I sometimes think I’m more accurate without a stopwatch. One thing about it that’s handy is for sharing information among the team. The skip has been standing in the house all end, then he’s expected to come down the ice and throw the last two shots. His sweepers can give him a target time depending on how fast the ice is at the moment.
They train to deliver rocks at (slightly made up numbers) 3.2, 3.4 or a 3.6 from backline to hogline. A 1/10th of a second is about 6’ so you can see they can “dial” in about 24’ on a shot. Now ice conditions, rocks and bunch of other things kick in but if after practice the lead is saying her 3.4 second deliver put a stone on the button everyone has a starting point.
Light sweeping is often advisable irrespective of the stone’s weight simply to “clean” its path. A hair or tiny piece of debris that came off someone’s clothes can catch a rock and alter its path.