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Controversy Over High-Tech Brooms Sweeps Through Sport of Curling
HughPickens.com writes: Billy Witz reports at the NYT that the friendly sport of curling suddenly has become roiled in controversy over — what else? — the brooms. The crux of the debate is fabric — specifically, something called directional fabric. The use of this material in broom pads is the latest escalation in an arms race among manufacturers, whereby the world's best curlers can guide the 44-pound stone around a sheet of ice as if it were controlled by a joystick. Many of the sport's top athletes, but not all of them, signed an agreement last month not to use the newest brooms. But with few regulations on the books and Olympic qualifying tournaments underway this month, the World Curling Federation has stepped in and issued new rules that set severe restrictions on the types of brooms that can be used. "There's definitely some anger over it," says Dean Gemmell. "In curling, we're generally known for being pretty friendly with most of your opponents. Even at the big events, you see the top players hanging out. But it's sort of taken that away this year, that's for sure."
It was prototype brooms made by BalancePlus that were the focus of complaints at the Toronto tournament, but Scott Taylor, president of BalancePlus, says they were never intended for sale, and were meant to demonstrate the problems that the reversed fabrics could cause. Players say the brooms allowed sweepers to "steer" the rock much more than they were comfortable with, and even slow them down. The brooms have been compared to high-tech drivers that allow amateur golfers to hit the ball as far as a pro, or the advanced full-body swimsuits that were banned from competition in 2010 for providing an unfair advantage. Of his company's high-tech broom, Taylor says: "This isn't good. It's like hitting a golf ball 500 yards."
It was prototype brooms made by BalancePlus that were the focus of complaints at the Toronto tournament, but Scott Taylor, president of BalancePlus, says they were never intended for sale, and were meant to demonstrate the problems that the reversed fabrics could cause. Players say the brooms allowed sweepers to "steer" the rock much more than they were comfortable with, and even slow them down. The brooms have been compared to high-tech drivers that allow amateur golfers to hit the ball as far as a pro, or the advanced full-body swimsuits that were banned from competition in 2010 for providing an unfair advantage. Of his company's high-tech broom, Taylor says: "This isn't good. It's like hitting a golf ball 500 yards."
I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing. One day the average teenager with a toy or the right diet will perform better than the best athlete if we prevent athletes from using assistive technologies. So what should we do? Expect sportspeople to live outside society and perform "human" sport for our entertainment?
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I say we should start a new Olympics. Like we have one for disabled people we should have one for people who can take whatever drugs they like, can use any new fancy dangled tech they want. I would pay to watch that! 100 meter sprint and two people hearts explode. AWESOME!
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
It's no secret that curlers are probably using performance enhancing drugs.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
" World Curling Federation has stepped in and issued new rules that set severe restrictions on the types of brooms "
It reminds me years ago when Illie Nastase used the infamous Spaghetti Racket which was mired in controversy decades ago when there was virtually no restrictions on tennis rackets.
http://www.tennis.com/gear/201...
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
American footballers are schoolgirls.
And then there's Curling. Real blood sport. My experience with Curling: Went to Ottawa for business, stopped in Vancouver for a connecting flight. In one waiting area bar was a few televisions with people watching Curling. I had two hours to kill so I sat down with a beer and watched Curling. Two hours later I left to get my connecting flight. Two hours of looking at my watch, drinking Molsen's, and watching Curling. Two hours. Seemed like 5. I tried to get into it, honestly. Then I left Vancouver. That was my last experience with Curling. Seriously. It could have been an English documentary on cheese making. I left with the same impression. Woah. Need a sleep-aid? Watch Curling.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
From what I gather, the whole controversy was manufactured by the broom manufacturer BalancePlus as a way to discredit or even ban the competitor manufacturer Hardline. Basically BalancePlus created a prototype broom which is meant to resemble their competitor's model in a few aspects, but also have a many "enhancements" which completely break the game (this is the "magical" broom that can control the rocks "like a joystick"). They created this game-breaking broom with the sole purpose of getting it banned and trying to get their competitor's model banned in the wake, which they accomplished.
It is a bit like when Tomas Edison created AC contraptions to electrocute puppies in order to prove to everybody that Tesla's AC was dangerous and that everybody should use his DC standard instead.
Sorry for the lengthy post but I've been following this very closely since is started and the media account has been highly misleading so far.
Basically this is largely a controversy involving two companies, BalancePlus (BP), a long established broom manufacturer, and Hardline (HL), a company that's been around for about 5 years and is built around their broom.
Both companies sponsor teams, that's the major way they market equipment since brush effectiveness is really hard to evaluate, so often the only way a club curler will trust a broom is if they know elite curlers are using it.
Hardline's broom was a big step technologically. There's a number of nice features but a couple are the fact it's very light (you can sweep a lot faster), and instead of sweeping with a woven fabric there's a diamond pattern applied to the fabric that seals it against moisture (brooms become less effective when they're wet).
Now no one really heard much of Hardline for the first few years but then last year they sponsored some of the top young teams and a couple of those teams had breakthrough seasons and started winning a lot. It could just be because they were young teams poised for a breakthrough, or it could be because the brooms gave them a huge advantage. Either way a lot of elite curlers started looking at the brooms and thinking they were really good, some decided to try getting Hardline sponsorship, some pushed their own sponsors to design comparable brooms, and others may have started thinking the brooms were too effective and were detracting from the skill of the game.
Now jump to October of this year and people are suddenly talking about a players meeting that happened in Toronto and some agreement among top curlers. Eventually over the next week the news starts leaking out. There was a big World Curling Tour event with a lot of the top teams including those sponsored by both BalancePlus (BP) and Hardline (HL). The BP teams came with a special kind brush that was doing ridiculous things, they could make a rock that would normally curl 6 feet one way fall 4 feet the other way, or make a draw run completely straight, the brooms also destroyed the ice in the process. Everyone present could see that whatever they were using shouldn't be allowed in the sport. Either way the BP teams said they'd stop using their brooms if the HL teams stopped using theirs.
BP then released a statement talking about how they'd been told the HL brooms were doing unnatural things to the rocks, so they investigated and found they used "directional fabric" (no one know what this means). So BP says they did this stunt to show that if they really wanted they could make a broom so effective it would wreck the sport but that they really felt that no one should use directional fabric (this was mixed in with all sorts of shots at the HL broom).
So within a week of this event there was an agreement that the HL sponsored teams would flip their brushing material inside out (it's just a cover with ordinary fabric on the underside). If the diamond pattern was "directional fabric" they'd just have an ordinary fabric. Of course they kept on winning and so people decided it must be something else. This seems to the motivation behind the World Curling Federation ruling that bans the texturing HL used on their fabric (supposedly the "directional fabric") and some other extra modifications to make the brush head firmer.
Here's the problem, there's absolutely no actual evidence that's been presented that the HL brooms are any different than other brushes, the only thing BP released is the two videos of their own demo brooms doing unnatural things. No one has ever shown HL brooms doing the same (and there's a lot of people who have them). In fact they only actual test I've heard of involved two teams trying to sort it out by testing with both brooms at some event. The test finished with both brushes perfor
I stole this Sig