On This Day in Olympic History: Feb. 16

VANCOUVER 2010

Curling at the long-awaited Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games kicked into gear 16 years ago today, with Canada’s Kevin Martin battling Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud right off the start.

The Norwegians appeared for pre-game practice wearing outlandish “Loudmouth” golf pants, in Norwegian colours adorned in a diamond pattern.

Curling had never seen anything like it before.

Within a day or two, over 100,000 people had joined a Facebook group called “The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team Pants.”

The page peaked at 700,000 group members and still has 360,000 today.

Martin’s men won the game 7-6 in an extra end. 

Other winners were the young, unheralded Nikas Edin of Sweden (over GBR’s David Murdoch 6-4) and German veteran Andy Kapp, who beat USA’s John Shuster 7-5.

The other men’s game saw Swiss skip Ralph Stoeckli score a 6-5 victory over Ulrik Schmidt of Denmark.

The women’s afternoon opening session saw Canada’s Cheryl Bernard edge Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott 5-4 and defending Olympic champion Anette Norberg of Sweden slide past Denmark’s Angelina Jensen 6-5. 

On the neighbouring sheets, Japan’s Moe Meguro won over USA’s Deb McCormick by 9-7 and Germany’s Andrea Schoen took out Russia’s Liudmilla Privikova by a 9-5 scoreline.

TORINO 2006

On this day there was some Weirdness and Poignance in Italy, with on-the-ground stories the average fan never gets to hear.

There was another tale, involving Canada’s lead for Team Kleibrink… a story so weird, it deserved a second blogpost here at The Curling News.

BEIJING 2022

With just a handful of sessions left before playoffs, Swiss skip Peter de Cruz lost a must-win men’s game 6-5 to Chinese veteran Ma Xiuyue. 

Ma is quite a sight when throwing a stone, as he employs a classic Manitoba tuck delivery.

On the women’s side, 2014 champ Jennifer Jones of Canada split her games, first beating the faltering Tabitha Peterson of USA 7-6 before dropping the evening match to China’s Han You by an 11-9 count.

Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg was also a double winner, while Swiss skip Silvana Tirinzoni and GBR’s Eve Muirhead scored wins in their sole matches.