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1.  Seventy percent of all curling stones ever made in the history of the sport come from the island of Ailsa Craig, a massive “volcanic plug” of granite emerging from the cold waters of the Firth of Clyde, halfway between Glasgow and Belfast by sea, like the smooth hump of a monolithic whale frozen in mid-spout.  It is hard to imagine the circumstances under which some nameless Scotsman, probably a fisherman with nothing better to do, made the discovery that the stone of Ailsa Craig was the best stone for making curling projectiles.  From the photos I have seen there doesn’t appear to be a single smooth rock or horizontal surface on the island.

2.  The granite from Ailsa Craig is prized because it is so dense.  Water cannot penetrate its tight crystalline structure, so it is less prone to cracking and pitting over time from the effects of freezing.  The rock is so special it has its own name – ailsite.  Ailsa Craig is only 104 acres in area.  The United States, by contrast, contains 2.3 billion acres.  Strangely, nowhere in the United States has a granite been found that is suitable for making curling stones.

3.  The meteoric rise in the popularity of curling since the 2002 winter Olympics has put a lot of pressure on stone manufacturers.  The source island for ailsite is now a protected puffin sanctuary.  Quarrying is no longer allowed, although stone manufacturer Kays of Scotland has exlusive permission from the Marquess of Ailsa, whose family has owned the island since 1560, to gather loose stones lying around on the cliffs.  They do this as often as the Marquess, and the birds, let them.  As recently as 2001 Kays of Scotland hauled off 1350 metric tons of curling cobbles.

4.  Curling clubs are popping up all over the world, wherever water can freeze and the startup costs can be found.  A single ailsite stone can cost up to $1500.  Outfitting a neighborhood curling club with stones and sheets, as the 150-foot ice lanes are called, is prohibitively expensive.  The stones alone can easily run as high as $40,000 per club.

5.  The popularity of curling is growing despite hindrances that seem designed to prevent outsiders from participating.  The cost of stones has already been discussed.  But the language used by curling insiders is equally off-putting.  For instance, swingy ice may compel the skip to call a kizzle kazzle.  In this situation there are many possible outcomes.  Depending on the pebble of the sheet, the sweepers, using their brooms and a stopwatch, will attempt to steer the pancake to the button.  Heavy ice may cause a rock to lose its handle, which may result in a hogger.  Too many of those could lead to your rink losing the bonspiel.  On the other hand, a rock encountering pick on the sheet may lead to an unexpected wicky wacky woo, in which case it’s time to celebrate.  But not too much, as it is considered bad form to gloat.

6.  Curling did not become an official Olympic sport until the Nagano Games in 1998, despite the fact that Scots have been wearing out corn brooms on local ponds since at least 1511.  Nagano was also where snowboarding was introduced to the Games.  The first snowboard wasn’t even conceived until 1965, four-and-a-half centuries after curling.

7.  Curling was introduced to this country in 1830 by Scottish immigrants to Michigan in 1830.  The Orchard Lake Curling Club used blocks of hickory rather than granite stones, so I’m not sure this really counts.  (Incidentally, Michigan also produced the sport of snowboarding when a man named Sherman Popper in Muskegon lashed two skis together for his eleven-year-old daughter.  The contraption was a hit with the kids and Popper soon began to market his “Snurfer.”)

8.  The town where U.S. curling got its start seems an unlikely place to have such a distinction.  Curling traditionally was the perfect sport for poor Scottish people, since all you needed to play it were a few big rocks, a corn shuck broom, and ice.  Orchard Lake Village today is a posh suburb of Detroit.  Local promoters claim Oakland County, in which Orchard Lake Village is located, is the wealthiest county in the Midwest and the fourth wealthiest in the nation.

9.  Orchard Lake is the current home of iconic rock musician Bob Seger, who is to Michigan what Jimmy Buffett is to the Gulf Coast. I feel strongly that in homage to Bob Seger, whose late townmates introduced this country to the sport, the U.S. Olympic curling team should change its name to the Silver Bullets.

10.  As if these distinctions weren’t enough for a town of just over 2000 people, Orchard Lake Village has a higher percentage of ethnic Assyrians than anyplace else in the country. Assyrians are people whose ancestors come from the Fertile Crescent, the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.  Not a place typically associated with ice sports.  I checked Google and confirmed that Syria does not yet have an Olympic curling team. Who knows? Maybe the Assyrians of Oakland County will one day export curling to Damascus as the Scots did to Detroit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.