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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."
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.
To some extent that is already true. No cyclist in the world can compete with a teenager using a motorized version.
So what should we do? Expect sportspeople to live outside society and perform "human" sport for our entertainment?
Well, they already are. There is no inherent benefit from sports other than our entertainment and athletes already live a life pretty different from average Joe.
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.
I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.
My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear.
No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't.
The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits.
These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.
"Oh no... he found the
It's no secret that curlers are probably using performance enhancing drugs.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Cycling, despite all the drug problems, is kind of in a similar place right now. You can go buy a road bike right now, that weighs just over 10 pounds. But the pros are restricted to using bikes that weigh at least 15 pounds. Some pros have even been known to add lead weight to their bike in order to not run afoul of the minimum weight limit. Note: This is completely within the rules.
I think that at the amateur level, there should definitely be rules about what kind of equipment you can use. Otherwise, many people who might end up being great at the professional level will never get there, as they were discouraged by the fact that they are continually losing to those with more money.
On the other hand, the professionals, with rich sponsors, it makes little reason to try and limit specific technologies. Obviously you want to disallow anything that would make the athletes unsafe. You probably also want to keep the general idea of the sport the same. Such as no recumbent bicycles in bike races meant for upright bikes. But limiting things like the fabric on curling brooms or the shape and material of your swimsuit seems like it's pushing things a little bit too far.
Even at the professional level there will disparities between what one team can afford and another. That is why some sports instituted things such as salary caps. The point is to keep the playing field level for all. I think that makes sense at every competition level. Of course, it'll never be completely level as those with money can devote more time and money on practicing and coaching. But at least you can guarantee that everyone is using roughly the same equipment. I'm not saying you should specifically disallow technology like this. I just think that the competition is better when there is some common requirement for equipment. It allows the athlete to shine and not the gear.
The only problem that I have with the corked bat is that traditionally in the pros, the bats have always been pure ash, or other hardwoods such as maple or hickory. If you're going to go the route of using corked bats, then that's fine, but you might as well allow any other materials such as aluminum. The simple solid wooden bat is a clear and distinct rule.
If curling was limited to straw brooms, then I could see why they would want to disallow everything but straw. But as soon as you let people start using synthetic fabrics, then disallowing one fabric will just cause the competitors to find a different fabric with the same properties. It basically creates an arms race for who can find the best way to go around the rules without technically breaking them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It is certainly true that they are already leading lives different to the average Joe when they can get a life ban from sport for using an over the counter cold treatment that contains a banned substance.
Yeah, and they can get a ban for eating a salad (made of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). Over simplifying the issues and presenting as an absolute with the intention of deceiving is a lie. You are lying. An athelete with a cold can go to a medical doctor, have their symptoms diagnosed, and be issued a prescription for a banned substance, then compete while on that banned substance and test positive for that banned substance, and not have any sanctions taken against them, even if they win (which, is unlikely if they are competing with a bad cold).
Now, if the athlete is sneaking banned substances and breaking the rules by taking it in secret in unknown doses, the sensitive tests that look for it will get a true positive, and without the pre-disclosure and documented treatment regimen, will be assumed to be an abuser.
The system works as intended, and isn't nearly as bad as the abusers claim it is.
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Not to mention the fact that not all medications list their full contents,
It's not that nobody knows what's in the medicines, but that the list of regulated substances from the sport don't match the legal regulations, so an ingredient isn't required by law to be listed, so it isn't, but it's still a banned substance.
Further is that the banned substances lists are often silly, as the body will create or metabolize the banned substance, such that consuming a non-banned substance can generate a "fail" because the non-banned substance will be metabolized into a banned substance in the body, or trigger the release of a banned substance by the body itself. If you made a pill that was not banned, but it triggered a release of HGH inside your body, then the pill is effectively banned, even if nothing in it is banned, nor is metabolized into a banned substance.
Almost all of this is known and not a surprise, but the trainers feign ignorance as they guide athletes to the best performance they can, hopefully (but not always) within the rules.
And none of that matters, as Lance can dope for years, over many tests, and never test positive. The tests are obviously beatable. The only way to win is cheat, for most sports. Train with steroids, then stop at some threshold before testing, so you get a pass result. Worked for Arnold (and almost everyone else in the sport). The muscles you cheat on don't disappear when you stop taking the steroids. But the tests will come back with a pass.
Learn to love Alaska
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