Blog
Foamgate, existing, and forthcoming research
At this point, many competitive curlers in Canada should be familiar with the recent announcement from World Curling about the withdrawal of specific foams in a small selection of brushes from World Curling’s approved equipment list for competitive play for the upcoming 2025 – 2026 season. World Curling came to their decision based on the outcome of brush testing in Morris, Manitoba during the Victoria Day weekend, along with feedback from the researchers on World Curling’s equipment advisory group, of which I am a member. To a significant extent, World Curling really didn’t have a choice but to try to address the concerns first brought to their attention with the players’ manifesto that was put together just prior to the Grand Slam event in Guelph this past January at the WFG Masters. The players who signed onto the manifesto were concerned that the brushes approved for competitive play this past season were too good: either they permitted additional carry above reasonable
Book review: Practical Applications in Sport Nutrition
Eating well to properly fuel your body for competition has to be one of the most overlooked aspects of curling for most young teams. To be sure, being fit and ensuring that you get enough sleep during both training and in competition are important too, but it’s difficult to play at your best on championship Sunday when you’re already tired. And it’s hard to concentrate on the game if you’re thinking about lunch. Curling Canada does have resources for coaches to learn about the importance of nutrition for their teams, and a module in the Competition Development program, entitled Health and Wellness, put together by Master Coach Developer Karen Watson RN, is a great place to start. To supplement that module, or to provide some guidance for athletes, there are many books and materials are sports nutrition available and this is one: Practical Applications in Sports Nutrition, by Heather Fink and Alan E. Mikesky. Here, I’ve reviewed the 5th edition
Junior Slam Series celebrates 10 years of youth curling
This fall, for the 2025-2026 curling season, Junior Slam Series convener Byron Scott will offer 25 events across the U15, U18, and U20 age groups and introduce some significant changes to the operation of Slam Series events. The newsletter at right (included here with permission; click on the image to view the entire newsletter in PDF) presents a summary of the forthcoming changes for 2025-2026. As a brief summary, the changes include: Pre-game practice, along with game timing and LSD protocols, will be adjusted to match those used in Curling Ontario qualifiers and provincials; Coaching interactions will be introduced for all mixed doubles events; Prize money will be distributed more widely across the field; For the first time, Junior Slam Series will host the first youth Continental Cup, with 4-person teams, mixed teams, and mixed doubles competition, in April 2026.  The forthcoming season begins early, with the first event being the first Mixed Doubles Cup at KW-Granite in Waterloo,
We are getting closer to understanding the physics of curling
Last year, 2024, marked the 100th anniversary of the first scientific article that I’m aware of that investigated the physics behind the sport of curling; a 1924 paper [5] by E. L. Harrington and his colleagues in the College of Engineering of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. In the 100 years since Harrington’s work, scientists and engineers have investigated various aspects of the sport, but our understanding of one of the sport’s singular fundamentals – why does a curling stone “curl” – remains incomplete, if not vague. There have been dozens of articles, authored by scientists and engineers from Canada, Sweden, Finland, China, Japan, and Korea, that have investigated the question of why stones curl the way they do, frequently contradicting each other’s mathematical models and none of them fully explaining all of a stone’s observed behaviours. At the same time, there are other aspects of the sport, particularly surrounding brushing, that have not been studied extensively and remain
Delivery analysis using OnForm Multi-cam support
A recent feature of the OnForm video analysis platform is its support for multi-camera input. The individual devices have to be connected to the same WIFI network, but once paired a “master” device can control the recording of all of the auxiliary devices that are providing alternative camera views. In this brief article, I wish to document my equipment setup for delivery analysis. At this practice, I’m looking at two things: slide leg position, and arm extension during the release motion, that are difficult to analyze when standing either directly in front of, or behind, the athlete. Delivery Analysis Setup For delivery analysis, I use a Ryobi steel mitre sawhorse with collapsible legs, with an iPhone mount, in landscape mode, mounted in its centre. A green light laser, positioned on the far tee line, points to the hack, forming the line of delivery (LOD). The plumb line – actually just a red hockey skate shoelace with a carabiner as a
Curling brushes – Try before you buy – Part Quatre
This article is joint work with Dr. John Newhook of Dalhousie University. This past weekend featured Provincial men’s and women’s championships in most of the Canadian provinces, and what was interesting to me was the number of teams who switched to Balance Plus brush heads for their respective territorial championships. As one example, Saskatchewan hosted the combined men’s and women’s provincial championships in Kindersley. All four of the teams in the men’s and women’s CURLSASK finals are regularly Hardline users (if not sponsored by the company). However, during Provincials two of the teams – Steve Laycock on the men’s side, and Nancy Martin on the women’s side – switched to using Balance Plus RS or RS XL brush heads with prismatic Hardline Hybrid handles. This situation was the reverse of a number of instances last season that saw teams (Kaitlyn Lawes in particular) use Balance Plus LiteSpeed handles with an IcePad brush head. While we are some ways away from