When it comes to sports, Texas is associated with a wide range of activities, but curling is the last event that comes to mind. One Olympic gold medalist is hoping to change that.
Former Olympian Tyler George wants to change that. According to KVUE, George recently settled in Austin and is hoping to promote the sport through a new company called Curl Austin.
“The community of curlers around the United States, it’s the best people that I've met in any walk of life,” he told the station.
The first dedicated space for curling in Texas, George told KVUE is hoping to bring attention to the sport. His background gives him plenty of credibility.
"I was on the 2018 U.S. Curling Team at the Olympics that won our country's first-ever gold medal," George said.
For an Olympic gold medal-winning curler, it is a long way from the ice of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics to an ice rink in Central Texas.
“There isn’t an area I know of that has less dedicated facilities,” George told KVUE. “Curling has got to the point now where we are going to make it succeed in the south.”
Like football, basketball or baseball, curling is a team sport. Like hockey, it is played on ice, a rare commodity in Texas. According to the World Curling Federation (WCF), two teams take turns sliding stones made of granite toward a target that is known as a house. A point can be awarded for stones that are situated within or touching the house, closer to the center of the circle than any of the opposing team’s stones.
According to the WCF, traditional curling squads include four players. It also can be played in a mixed doubles configuration of two players, one female and one male. According to the website, curling equipment includes a set of stones weighing about 40 pounds (20 kilos) each. Curlers also have a brush and a pair of shoes with one for gripping and one for sliding.
The sport, the WCF explained on its website, is played on a long strip of ice that is specially prepared. Known as a sheet, the playing surface is about 150 feet long and 16 feet wide. A championship game can last up to three hours, according to the WCF.