OGDEN — As a kid growing up, Collin Crook’s dad, a Canadian, instilled in him a love of curling.
“Pretty much every Olympics, we’d sit there and watch it with my dad all day,” he said. “It’s so strategic and so interesting to see how it flows game to game.”
The love for the sport has remained, and the Pocatello man found himself in paradise on Friday, watching some of the world’s best curlers at the Ice Sheet on the Weber State University campus in Ogden.
“It’s awesome. I love it,” he said, seated in the stands of the converted hockey rink.
Ogden is hosting the LGT World Men’s Curling Championship, where Crook was getting his fix of the sport, and the action, which started Friday, continues through April 4, when the new world champ is to be crowned. It’s perhaps the biggest curling event after the Olympics, and Utah officials are eager to showcase the ability of the state to host world-class sporting events ahead of the 2034 Winter Games, to be held in the state.
“While the (curling) world championships are not specifically linked to 2034, the event is emblematic of the culture of sport that has developed here in Utah since 2002,” when the state last hosted the Winter Olympics, said Tom Kelly, spokesman for the 2034 Games. “As Utah 2034, we would anticipate that more events like this will come to Utah, not just for 2034, but because of the venues we have and the great culture of sport here.”
Similarly, Sara Toliver, president of Visit Ogden, Weber County’s tourism promotion body, sees the event as an opportunity to put Ogden on the world stage and showcase what the city and Weber County have to offer. “It’s a pretty fantastic opportunity to get to take advantage of,” she said.
Perhaps at a more basic level, though, the tournament gives Ogden and Utah a peek into a sport that doesn’t typically garner a lot of attention. The Ice Sheet hosted curling events during the 2002 Olympic Games, and the facility is home to club curling activities, but otherwise, it’s more commonly used by the Ogden Mustangs hockey team and figure skaters.
Now, it’s serving as host facility for 13 top curling teams from around the world, including some squads that took part in the Milano Cortina Games in Italy last February. Matches are to be held daily through the coming week, and tickets are still available.
“They are top-level curlers,” said Eeva Roethlisberger, head of competition for World Curling, the international governing body for the sport, and on hand for the Ogden tournament. The teams come from the United States, Canada, China, Czechia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Sweden and Switzerland.
She’s a curler, though she didn’t reach the level of the participants on the teams now in Ogden, and likens the sport to “chess on ice” because of the strategizing involved. Among the participants now in Ogden are John Shuster, part of the U.S. team that won gold in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
“I think it’s a fascinating sport,” Roethlisberger said. “It’s strategic. It’s very athletic, which a lot of people don’t think it is, but it is.”
Matches take place in a long corridor of ice, with teams taking turns sliding a large stone from one end of the lane to the other, trying to get the heavy rock into the house, the bullseye target. Team members will sweep the ice in front of the moving stone to aid in its travel, part of the strategy being to knock the stones from the opposing team out of the house. Points are scored based on which team gets their stones closest to the middle of the bullseye, or button.
“It is more difficult than you think,” said Crook, who was watching Norway and Japan face off with his wife, Sophie Crook, who’s become a curling fan. It may not be hard to heave the stone down the ice, he said, but “it’s hard to do it well.”
A lot of shouting is involved, as team members advise their sweepers on how best to direct the stone as it slides down the lane.
Weekend ticket sales have been good, and Toliver says the curling action could be a good option for kids who will be on spring break next week. Kids 12 and under can attend free for the 9 a.m. curling sessions during the week, she said, creating an opportunity “to see these world-class athletes and do something fun and different.”