🥌 Winter Olympic sport, which has a thirty-year tradition in the Czech Republic.
🥌 A sport whose essence is a gentlemanly attitude. Curling basically does without referees, the key part of the game is fair play. See Spirit of Curling for more.
🥌 A game in which teams send rocks across the ice to a goal area. A team scores points for their stones that end up closer to the center than their opponent’s stones after all stones have been played.
Do you want to learn curling? Do you want to try it?
Visit hrajcurling.cz
What are the most common questions about curling?
Including the answers, you can find them at curling.cz/faq
Equipment
stone
Real granite stone. It weighs almost 20 kg, but it does not lift, it is only sent across the ice. An entire set of stones on one track belongs to each other and is not normally split.
The owner of the stones is usually the hall. Continental and World Championships use stones owned by the World Curling Federation.
The colored handle differentiates the stones of the two teams, red and yellow colors are most often used. The stones are also numerically indicated, which helps players distinguish individual stones. In one set, the stones are always the same size, weight and made from the same granite massif. However, the stones are of natural origin, so it is possible that they may behave a little differently (for example, during practice, players will find that stone #3 from the second lane spins less than others). The differences are minimal, but curling is sometimes about millimeters.
broom
Equipment used for sweeping, or as a stabilizing aid when throwing stones. A sponge is attached to the so-called head, i.e. the part that touches the ice when sweeping. Now a special fabric sponge is used, previously also synthetic fibers and artificial hair (these were banned for competitions a few years ago). Historically, natural hairs were also used, as well as the so-called cornbroom, which resembles a household broom for cleaning.
Each player has his own broom and it is forbidden to exchange it for another during the match. It is not even possible to change the sponge. The lifetime of the broom is practically unlimited, but the sponge is damaged by sweeping and needs to be changed. At the highest level, even after each match, in a less precise environment, the sponge stops being suitable for sweeping after rejecting on the order of units of matches.
schoes
Players have special shoes. One shoe has a sliding sole and the other a non-slip sole. The sliding shoe allows for a curling slide when throwing the stone. Some players also use gliding when sweeping. The second shoe does not slip and helps to keep stability. A rubber sleeve (antislide) can be put on the sliding shoe, thanks to which not a single shoe slides. The sliding surface is made of Teflon.
