Greener Curling Pastures Part II

The other Curling Matt recently wrote about curling club house colors. This reminded me of something I wrote a few years ago regarding curling stone handle colours.

(Matt S is American, so his story referred to “colors.” As I, Matt B, am Canadian, I shall be referring to “colours.”)

I get strangely excited when I play at a different club, and their plastic stone handles are a different colour than the ones I’m used to.

We have red and yellow handles (I will just say “stones” from here on) at the KW Granite, and I grew up playing with blue and yellow stones at the Sarnia Golf and Curling Club. So, I’m always on the lookout for a bit of variety in my stones.

That got me thinking: How much variety in colour is actually out there, and what are the most popular colours at local curling facilities? Curling Canada, the World Curling Federation and the Grand Slams all use red and yellow handles, so my hypothesis is that those are the de-facto “standard” colours.

(However, it should be noted that the Grand Slam has used orange and black stones on Halloween, which is very cool.)

My research started by searching my memories from the clubs I have physically played at over the years … and I quickly realized my sample size would be quite lacking. So, I did what any lazy researcher would do: I turned to the internet.

I scoured many club websites and social media accounts looking for photographic evidence of stone colour. It’s a strangely addicting process, and after I had 50 or so, I realized I needed more. So, I enlisted the help of my favourite editor and sucked him into this black hole with me (thanks gk).

After tallying 135 clubs, I had to stop myself. It was as good of a number as any, and it truly could have consumed my time for a whole week. So, here are the results. 

After researching 135 clubs (mostly around my area in Southern Ontario, but I eventually branched out around the world), red and yellow finished in a dead heat, being found in 75% of all clubs surveyed. Blue wasn’t too far behind at 55%. 

After that, the drop off is significant. In fact, only 4% of clubs I researched used a handle colour other than the big three. Green was used in three clubs, black in two, and orange and white in one each.

Special mention goes out to the Auckland Curling Club in New Zealand. My contact down there (who’s played at that club a few times) tipped me off to the fact that they use AT LEAST five different colours … and those are just the ones I found photographic evidence for. There could be more, crazier colours, but I couldn’t verify it by press time. Also in New Zealand, the Dunedin Curling Club boasts four colours, while in the Netherlands, Curling Club Friesland also offers four colours.

What does this all mean? It means you should grow an imagination, curling facilities! Branch out and get some character. That doesn’t just apply to local clubs either; the big guys and gals on TV could also use a bit of a break from tradition from time to time.