Monday, February 22, 2010

Curling fans get crazy...

Here's a post from a Yahoo! sports blog that popped up on my homepage. It's completely unpolitical, but I found it interesting.

In a close women's curling match where Canada won 5-4 over Denmark, Danish Madeliene Dupont blamed the aggressive Canadian fans when she missed two potentially game-winning shots.

Curling is a sport that apparently requires intense concentration and the ability to hear your teammates. Dupont was practically in tears after 6,000 Canadian fans began stomping and making deafening noise. The noise was obviously intended to distract Dupont.

I understand such noise in sports such as basketball, hockey, and football, where the noise of the crowd is normal and expected by the players. But curling is tame sport, like golf, where it is the polite thing to be quiet, and only cheer when the players are finished. Even a Canadian curler agreed that the fans were loud, but excused their behavior based on the fact they "don't know the game." I think it's a lame excuse. They were obviously quiet when it was Canada's turn.

As an obnoxiously loud fan myself, I understand Canada's pride and desire for their home team to win. But I also find it embarrassing in a sport such as curling, where it is not appropriate. They're the hosts, and they should know better. Save it for the hockey rinks.

1 comment:

Jenny Yeonhee Park said...

Whoa i didn't know that curling required the ability to hear your teammates. I totally agree with Katie's post. Although I believe some attempts at distraction is acceptable, I guess there is a certain point it becomes rude. Aragon always tries to distract the other school's basketball team when they are doing their free throws and in a way, it shows school pride, spirit, and support. However, in the case of curling, I guess the pride, spirit and support overwhelmed to the point where they interfered with the outcome of the game in an unfair manner.