The ABCs of Curling - X

is for X-Rated. If the nineties was the decade curling discovered it had an audience, the 2000s will be remembered as the decade curling discovered it had sex appeal. Several internet lists of "Olympic Hotties" at the 2010 Vacouver games were topped by then 43-year-old Canadian skip Cheryl Bernard, and included many other curling athletes - women and men included. But this was not always the way.

In 1987, with the Calgary Olympic games around the corner and curling included as a demonstration sport, the Canadian Curling Association issued a directive to several national level curlers expected to compete at that year's Olympic trials: lose weight. Ed Werenich, a former Canadian and World champion, considered one of the favourites to represent Canada the following year, took great umbrage at the threat of being excluded from the trials if the national body did not consider him 'fit enough.' If a team is winning at an elite level, what matter if the members weigh two hundred, or even three hundred pounds, he argued. He and his vice, Paul Savage, threatened to show up to the trials with a case of beer as a training aid, and a local exotic dancer as their official coach. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and Eddie showed up without "Marina" and eighteen pounds lighter - a fact on which he blames his loss to this day (the weight difference, not the lack of a stripper).

In the end, the CCA needn't have worried. The general rise in the level of competition in the upper echelons of the game over the past three decades has resulted in elite level curlers looking to improve their overall fitness levels in order to remain competitive on the world stage. Kevin Martin's 2010 Olympic gold medal winning squad became so devoted to their fitness regimens it led vice John Morris to write a book about curling specific exercise routines.

In 2006, following on the rousing success of naked or nearly naked fundraising calendars from firefighters, golfers, quilting guilds, skeptics (and skep-chicks), Andorran professional photographer and competitive curler Ana Arce convinced a dozen world-class curling women to pose nude or semi-nude for their own calendar, Fire on Ice. The project was successful enough to spawn a 2007 version. It lapsed in 2008, but was revived in '09 and published almost every year since, sometimes alternating years between male and female models, and some years featuring both.

Clearly, even in curling, sex sells.
[edited 09/23/2019 to add more up to date calendar information]

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