Curling is a precision sport practiced on ice with stones, cut and polished according to an international template. The primary purpose of the game is to place the stones as close as possible to a circular target drawn on the ice, called the House.
It is generally considered that this game was invented in the 16th century in Scotland, despite the existence of two paintings by Pieter Brueghel the elder depicting Dutch farmers playing curling. The curling outdoors was really popular in Scotland between the 16th and 19th centuries, when they had a freezing winter climate, enough to provide right ice conditions. The headquarters of the World Federation of Curling is located in the town of Perth, Scotland. Curling was an official Olympic sport in 1924 and again in 1998.
The curling championship has been held annually since 2008 and has presented the best-mixed doubles teams in the world. The game consists of two players, a man and a woman on each side, who represent their country without substitute. Playing on the same ice sheet, each team has six stones instead of eight as traditional curling. A stone is placed on the line in the center of each side before the final game begins. A player must deliver the first and last stone, while the other player operates the second stone, the third stone and the fourth, and any of the players of the team can sweep, with a playback time of 46 minutes each and the games are fixed at eight ends. Here you have 7 of the best Curling Players in the world:
- Thomas Lรธvold โ is a professional curler from Norway, who as a junior competed as skip, and succeeded to win gold medals in 2002 and 2003 on the World Junior Curling Championship. He has also played at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and we can proudly say that his most significant and essential match was the one in Lucerne where his team has made to the semi-finals.
- John Morris โ is a professional curler from Canada, who succeeded to win the gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. He had started with curling when he was 5 years old at the Navy Curling Club.
- Carmen Schรคfer โ is a curler from Switzerland who was part of the junior team, that won the World Junior Championship in 1999. She plays for Mirjam Ott team as a third curler.
- John Benton โ is a curler born in Plymouth, Minnesota. His curling career begins in 1975 as being part of Junior National Championships od United States in 1987. He as well has the right to compete in 2010 at the Vancouver Olympic Games. At the 2014 Olympic Games, he was hired from NBC sports to work as a curling analyst.
- Liu Jinli โ she is an international curler from China, and she plays in the team in Heilongjiang, and she is also part of the National Team in China.
- Ekaterina Galkina โ she is a curler from Russia. She was part of Ludmila Privivkova’s team at the Olympic games in 2006 in Turin, Italy, and after a year the same team won the European Curling Championship.
- Jennifer Jones โ a Canadian curler who has won a gold medal at Winter Olympic Games, and she is the first female curler skip that has gone through the games undefeated.