Brazilian Sweepers call out the USA

[Young Drachma]

in curling.



Story

A Curling Team Proves Not All Brazilian Sweepers Play Soccer
By PAT BORZI

Nowhere in Brazil’s more than three million mostly tropical square miles is there a facility devoted to curling, the stone-and-broom sport played on ice that joined the Winter Olympics program in 1998.

So when USA Curling, the sport’s American governing body, received an official challenge from Brazil last summer for the second Western Hemisphere berth at the 2009 men’s world championship, Rick Patzke, the chief operating officer, did not know what to make of it.

“We knew they were out there playing,” Patzke said, “but we didn’t really have them on our radar until they made the challenge.”

The best-of-five match against the United States team, beginning Friday in Bismarck, N.D., will be Brazil’s international curling debut, an appearance about as unlikely as that of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics.

“When I mention it to friends and family, the first question they ask is, ‘Are you going to Brazil?’ ” said Todd Birr, the skip, or captain, of the United States team. “No, we’re going to Bismarck. But it should be fun.”

The World Curling Federation allots two berths in the 12-team world championship to countries from the Americas, and in the 50 years of the event the lone representatives have been the United States and Canada. Only two other countries in the Americas belong to the federation: Brazil, which joined in 1998, and the United States Virgin Islands.

Canada, as the host nation and the defending world champion, cannot be bumped. That leaves the United States, home to 13,000 curlers, according to USA Curling, to defend its berth.

That Patzke knew Brazil had a team at all shows how fast even sketchy word travels in curling circles. The team’s four curlers — Marcelo Mello, Celso Kossaka, Luis Silva and Cesar Santos — were not known to the Brazilian Ice Sports Federation until early 2008, a few months after they took up the game as a lark between graduate studies and work at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec.

According to their first coach, Judy Cassidy of the Lennoxville Curling Club in Sherbrooke, none of the four realized the heft of a granite curling stone (40 pounds) until they showed up to ask about lessons in the summer of 2007. And no one, not even the players themselves, gives them much chance against Birr’s team, which finished third at the 2007 world championship and led the qualifying for February’s United States Olympic trials in Broomfield, Colo.

“It’s hard to evaluate,” Cassidy said of the Brazilians’ chances in a telephone interview from Sherbrooke. “In light of the time they’ve been curling, they’re very good. But when you have somebody who’s been curling for a year against a team that’s very experienced, it’s going to show.”

Mello, the skip of the team, said in an e-mail interview that the four curlers — all Brazilian nationals in their 30s and 40s — had never met until they arrived at Sherbrooke in 2006, though they knew of one another through Internet message boards. Mello, Silva and Santos are pursuing master’s degrees; Kossaka is a graphic designer and multimedia coordinator at the university.

Kossaka, the vice skip, or assistant captain, suggested they take up curling after watching a competition in Quebec.

“At the time we were looking for a winter sport because we were newcomers in Canada,” Mello said. “We didn’t know about the rules.” Quickly, he said, “we became passionate, I would say addicted, for curling.”

A few months later, Kossaka contacted Eric Maleson, the president of the Brazilian Ice Sports Federation. Maleson, inspired by the Jamaican bobsled team, piloted Brazil’s first Olympic four-man bobsled entry in Salt Lake City in 2002, finishing 27th out of 29 teams on a bright-yellow sled called the Frozen Banana. He retired to help develop Brazil’s winter sports programs.

Maleson had been looking for curlers. The federation plans a curling club as part of the country’s first ice sports center, to be built in Campos do Jordão, near São Paulo. Maleson met with the group in Sherbrooke last winter and suggested the challenge as a training goal.

“To be honest, I was at first skeptical,” Maleson said in a telephone interview from Norwell, Mass., where he lives part of the year. “Are these guys really serious? But after I got to know Celso and Marcelo and Luis and Cesar, I saw they were very serious people, very professional people. They’re really committed to everything they do.”

So Maleson committed some of his federation’s limited resources to financing the challenge.

Birr, a machinist from Mankato, Minn., said his team was taking the challenge seriously.

“It’s a little nerve-racking because our spot at worlds is on the line,” he said. “We’re excited to play in it. We’re honored. From a curling standpoint, it’s good, because we want to see curling expand. But we don’t want to lose our world spot, either.”

For Mello, winning or losing is not the point. “We are not really thinking much about that,” he said. “What we really want is to help introduce Brazil in the curling world.”

[DrAFTjunkie]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

in curling.



Story

Three words.

Jamaican
Bobsled
Team

[sterlingice]

Oh, hell no!



These men from Minnesota beg to differ.

Do they not know we train our curling legions at a place called "Broomfield" (according to the article, anyways)?

SI

[Logan]

Originally Posted by DrAFTjunkie

Three words.

Jamaican
Bobsled
Team

I see PRIDE! I see POWER! I see a bad-ass mudda, who don't take no crap off of NOBODY!

[Critch]

This could be the inspiration for another bad movie.

[Ryche]

Think I'm actually going to try curling next winter. There's a big facility where they play a lot of it very close to my house.

[Izulde]

The rock is a heavy sucker to throw, let me tell you.

[JediKooter]

Dude! IT'S FUCKING ON!!!! BRING IT ON BRAZIL!!!!

[Logan]

Originally Posted by JediKooter

Dude! IT'S FUCKING ON!!!! BRING IT ON BRAZIL!!!!

And bring some of your women too.

[CU Tiger]

Brazillian Women?
YES!
Brazillian Bikini?
Oh HELL Yeah!
Brazillian Wax?
Sure
Brazillian Curling?
nah Ill pass

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by Logan

And bring some of your women too.

Yes, as matter of fact Brazil, you can just leave your ice sweeping losers home and just send the women.