If you’re not a hardcore fan of the Winter Olympics or haven’t participated in the sport itself, you may not be familiar with curling, which to the casual observer appears to be a strange hybrid between bocce bowling and shuffleboard played on ice.
But for Redmond resident Bob Knievel, second cousin to motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, the sport has been a lifelong passion of his, dating back to his youth living in frigid north Alberta, Canada.
“I started at age 16,” he recalled. “I was going to high school in a small, rural community 90 miles northeast of Calgary. In that area we had a hockey rink, a curling rink and that’s about it.”
CURLING CONCEPT
Though it may look confusing at first glance, curling is actually quite simple to understand. Teams take turns delivering eight of their own stones, which are made of granite and weigh between 38 and 44 pounds, towards a target painted on the ice that resembles a bull’s-eye.
After all stones are thrown, called an “end,” the team with the stone closest to the center of the target gets one point, and one additional point for each stone closer to the center than the opponent’s nearest stone. Games usually last for 10 ends.
Two sweepers with specialized brooms follow each rock as it nears the target, as sweeping the ice will decrease friction and allow the stone to travel farther and straighter.
“A lot of people think curling is similar to bowling, and shuffleboard, but it’s extremely different,” said Knievel, whose wife, Carol, plays the sport. “Curling is played on ice, and the field is 14 feet wide and 146 feet long. If you’re going to curl, like any sport, you have to be physically fit.”
Although the sport originated in medieval Scotland in the 16th century and has was brought to Canada by immigrants in the 1800s, it wasn’t until 1998 that curling became an official medal sport at the Winter Games.
But once millions of viewers tuned in and saw the sport being played on television, its popularity took off.
“I think the Olympics has really given curling a good shot in the arm,” Knievel admitted. “In the state of Washington back in the sixties, there were maybe four or five different clubs. Now there’s only one (Granite Curling Club, Seattle), and we’re starting to run out of ice time.”
The Granite Curling Club, which opened in 1961, will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Curling clubs are open from November to April, but this year they are looking to stay open through June for a summer league.
Since its opening, the club has had another prestigious title: grooming national champions. In the last 50 years, the curlers at Granite Curling have been responsible for bringing home 35 national championships. The club’s junior teams have also had a great deal of success, including the junior boys team, which won the National Junior Championship in January, and the senior women’s team, which took the U.S. Senior Women’s Championship. The junior boys will head to Switzerland in March for the World Junior Curling Championships, and the women will travel to Russia in April for the World Senior Championship.
THE EIGHT-ENDER
In his more than 50-year curling career, Knievel has seen his share of memorable moments, such as participating in the 1996 U.S. Mixed Nationals in Chicago as a member of the Granite Curling Club team, and performing well.
“We played a round-robin with 10 teams,” Knievel remembered. “We were tied for first after the round-robin … but we lost in the semifinals. That was a wonderful experience to compete at the national level.”
But ask the 67-year old curling veteran what his top moment was in the sport, and he will take you back more than four and a half decades.
“We got an eight-ender once, when you score with all eight rocks,” said Knievel, adding that the feat is akin to a hole-in-one in golf. “We got one of those back in 1964 in Montreal. It was a very rare occasion.”
Five years after that “eight-ender,” he married his wife and moved to Montreal, Quebec and then to the Greater Seattle region, where Bob has been employed by Boeing as a Landing Gear Specialist for the last 31 years and plans to retire this June. Both Bob and Carol are dual citizens of the United States and Canada.
While Carol stood on the sidelines cheering her husband on, she got the urge to curl herself after their three grown children left the house. Undaunted, she joined a mixed league at the Granite Curling Club, which has approximately 500 members, with many more sure to join after the Vancouver Games.
“He’s curled all these years… that was his outlet and I always respected that,” Carol said. “I was very involved with our children, but when the youngest one graduated from the University of Washington I was sitting here one day thinking, ‘Shoot, it’s time I start curling. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’”
For more information on the Granite Curling Club, visit their Web site at www.curlingseattle.org.
