| Peter Lacey 2006-03-19, 6:55 pm |
| Pete Dashwood wrote:
> Yeah, right... It's 'popular' here in NZ too. Many people here watched
> curling during the Winter Olympics. Some of them stayed up past their
> bedtimes and some of them missed having their poultices changed... :-)
> Bowls is bad enough. Having a couple of people racing down preparing the ice
> in front of the oncoming stone seems to me to kind of defeat the object of
> the game. (Given that the object is a match of skill on the part of the
> people releasing the stones...) Could you imagine a couple of blokes with
> motor mowers doing the same in Lawn Bowls... :-)
>
Now do stop blathering on subjects you wot not of. Curling does appear
at first glance to be trivial and a no-talent sport. But get out there
and try it. You have to send a 41-lb rock down a sheet of ice to a spot
more than 90' away; the final position of that stone, depending on the
circumstances of the game, may have to be within a one-quarter INCH
radius of the required spot. It's almost impossible to throw a rock in
a straight line, so you have to aim to one side or the other. The air
temperature and the ice temperature change during the course of the
game, so what works at first will be over-throwing towards the end of
the game. The impetus you give to the rock when you throw it - the
"weight" - and the direction in which you direct it must be VERY exact.
Believe me - getting the weight right takes years of practice!
The sweepers do have an influence on the course of the rock. Their
sweeping temporarily warms up the ice in front of the rock a tiny but
measurable amount, which means the rock will slide faster and therefore
straighter. The National Research of Canada did experiments with a
mechanical rock thrower; they determined that sweeping can drag the rock
from 2 to 25 feet further (again depending on the circumstances).
Sweeping may also clear bits of debris from in front of the rock; but
sometimes a hair will fall off the broom and get under the rock - then
you'll see it do amazing things. I've seen rocks stop dead, then go a
completely different way - one even described a small circle and then
came back towards the thrower! The idea is that the sweepers make up
for the deficiencies of the shooter; most teams, in fact, under-throw
the rock and have the sweepers control it: you can speed up a rock but
you can't slow it down, you see.
I wouldn't want to comment on lawn bowling since I know almost nothing
about it. Those that play it can comment on the inwardness of it. But
it SEEMS to me that mowing the way in front of a ball would make things
worse, since the mowers would change the ground permanently and
unpredictably. I wot not of it!
PL
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