Curling isn’t just about rocks and ice. Next to the field there is a music box that counts down. Each team has 38 minutes for the ten rounds. If all of the stones are not delivered before time runs out, the team loses the game.
“It’s very unusual, but I’ve actually seen it in both championships and Grand Slam games,” says Kristian Lindström, the coach of the Swedish women’s team at the Olympics.
He says that it is Then it was a matter of the teams simply forgetting the time and not having time to play the last stone.
When time runs out, a signal usually sounds in the hall and the referee steps forward and says that the team has lost.
When Swedish captain Niklas Edin sent away his last stone in the game against Germany, the clock showed five seconds.
In the game against Canada on Tuesday, the Swedish women’s team finisher Anna Hasselborg had 19 seconds left. Lindström says it’s not as stressful as it seems.
– Most of the time it is quite quiet and you have time under control. Kevin Koe (Canadian world champion) used to average four or five seconds, he says.
Previously, the clock measured the time that a team’s stone was in motion. Nowadays, the law’s reflection time is measured. Lindström likes the new system.
– Previously, a draw took longer than an elimination. Things are much better now that the cooling-off period now applies, he says.
Anna Le Moine played on one of Anette Norberg’s teams that won Olympic gold in Turin 2006 and Vancouver 2010. In Turin, the nerves remained in control in the final against Switzerland and ensured victory with his last stone.
Le Moine, who is on site in Cortina as an expert radio sports commentator, says what happened is that time ran out.
“Of course it could be stressful,” she says, explaining that for natural reasons you want the person playing the last pieces each round to have extra time.
“If you need to think a little more, you can use your time off,” she says.
Most teams assigned a player responsible for keeping an eye on the clock. For the two-time Olympic champions, it was the job of captain Anette Norberg’s sister Cathrine Lindahl. Agnes Beinehauer is second on today’s Olympic team, but colleague Sofia Scharback says she usually helps out.
“It’s happened a few times that we’ve run out of time because we’re a team that usually takes the time we’re given, but I’ve never seen a team run out of time,” Scharback said.
She also says the watch can be stressful in certain situations.
– Sometimes it hit us when we didn’t have time to talk about what we should do and made the wrong tactical decisions. But in general we are good at making the most of time. “When it gets tight, we try to play the first pieces, play quickly so that Anna (Hasselborg) gets the time she needs,” says Scharback.
Read more:
Canada won with sandpaper stones – Sweden still reached the semi-finals
Johan Esk: Swedish chaos ruined the Olympics – not Canada’s cheating fingers
