Home-ice advantage to end

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This article was published 10/12/2010 (5714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They are the most famous set of curling rocks in the world and they have been giving Manitoba curlers a ‘home-ice’ advantage at the Brier, worlds and Olympic Trials for over a decade.

But that is about to end now that the Canadian Curling Association has purchased its own set of rocks and will no longer be needing to rent the set that belongs to the Manitoba Curling Association to use in national and international curling events in this country.

The MCA’s rocks have been used in every Brier since 1998 and most of the world curling championships that have been held in Canada during that period as well, not to mention three Olympic Trials.

But now that the CCA has purchased the set of rocks that were made specifically for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, they have informed the MCA they will no longer be requiring the MCA rocks for national or international events beyond this winter.

The MCA rocks will make their farewell tour early next year, putting in one final Brier appearance in London, Ont., in March before sliding over to Regina the next month, where they will be used one final time internationally at the men’s world championship.

And then it will be back from whence they came, to once again serve exclusively as Manitoba’s “house set” for use in the major provincial curling championships in this province.

Every Manitoba men’s curling championship since the 1970s has been decided using the MCA rocks, as well as every women’s championship since the late 1990s.

Because there are always slight variations within curling rocks — and then within the sets of rocks themselves — part of the challenge of curling is figuring out how the rocks behave differently from one another, curling more or less, sliding shorter or further.

And that’s created an advantage for Manitoba curlers at national events because they would already know the subtle differences between rocks before they’d arrive at a big show like the Brier, whereas many curlers from other provinces would have to start from scratch.

Steve Gould, the longtime lead for Jeff Stoughton, said he’s been using the rocks for so long that he’s even got his favourite pair among the 82 stones that make up the MCA set.

“Numbers 1 and 6 Red on Sheet C,” said Gould. “Those were the ones I liked to use whenever I could. I loved those ones. I just always drew well with them.

“It was definitely an advantage all these years, getting to the arena and already knowing the rocks.”

The stones that make up the MCA set are, like any set of stones, completely unique. Made of blue Trefor granite mined from a quarry in Wales, the MCA stones have a more squat profile than some more modern stones and have become slightly underweight over the decades due in part to the sanding required in many refinishings.

But thanks to the efforts of MCA icemaker Hans Wuthrich, they are also considered as perfectly matched as possible. Wuthrich has developed over 15 years a “rock bible” on the MCA set, with intricate profiles of each stone — to the gram in weight and fraction of a millimetre in running profile — allowing him to pair the right rocks with each other, and then within a set.

The rocks have become like an old friend to Wuthrich, a bulky travel companion that has followed him all over Canada to curling events. But he says the changeover to the Vancouver rocks for national events is welcome.

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“Those rocks at the Olympics were just excellent,” said Wuthrich, who was the head icemaker in Vancouver. “They performed really well. We got lots of letters from people, curlers, about how good those rocks were.”

While both sets of stones have proven track records, Wuthrich said the advantage of the Vancouver rocks over the MCA stones comes down to colour.

Wuthrich says the dark grey colour of the MCA stones absorbs a lot of heat from the television lights in place at big events like the Brier and that can cause them to react differently as a game wears on.

The Vancouver stones, Wuthrich says, are a much lighter green that doesn’t absorb nearly as much heat, making them more consistent throughout a game.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca