Ice Sports
Speeding Toward Mainstream Mania
By Adrianne Bowen
With the 2010 Winter Olympics just around the corner, ice sports such as bobsled, skeleton, curling and luge are really taking off, according to sports officials. The exposure and success of these sports in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games is helping to bring them into the mainstream, and officials anticipate phenomenal records in the number of athletes and spectators alike.
Amanda Bird, marketing and communications manager for U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (USBSF), said that bobsled—featuring two or four athletes sitting upright in a bobsleigh—and skeleton—featuring one athlete lying on his/her stomach, face-first on a sled—are taking off in popularity as a result of Olympic excitement and new opportunities to promote the sports.
One way that USBSF is working to enhance the sports is through a new branding initiative. Adrenalin Inc. has designed a new logo highlighting bobsled and skeleton that USBSF will use in all of its marketing, sponsorship, and events signage and collateral, including the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. “My top priority is to build the sports of bobsled and skeleton by bringing more athletes to these great sports, providing them with the tools to be successful, and increasing visibility with fans. Branding is a critical part of achieving those goals because of the big impact that effective branding has on how successfully an organization markets itself,” said Darrin Steele, CEO of the USBSF and former Olympian.
Bobsled and skeleton are also growing because of the Olympic buzz surrounding the qualifying events for the 2010 Winter Olympics. One of the sports’ major events is the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Toboganning (FIBT) World Championships, held annually except for the Winter Olympic years. The event features four heats for each of the disciplines—including bobsled two-person men, two-person women, and four-person men, and in skeleton men and women. The event will be held Feb. 20-March 1, 2009, in Lake Placid, N.Y., USBSF’s home track. “The top athletes in both sports will fight for the World Champion title and to qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games,” Bird said. She expects to see 3,500 spectators and approximately 60-70 skeleton athletes and 70-80 bobsled athletes competing in the 2009 event, which will receive worldwide media coverage. “FIBT is working with NBC Olympics in hopes of broadcasting the event and streaming it online, in addition to international, national and local TV and print media.”
Also making headlines in bobsled and skeleton are the FIBT Bobsled and Skeleton World Cup Races, a series of eight races on the World Cup Circuit, with two heats for each of the disciplines. The races begin in November and continue through February 2009 at tracks in locations including Altenberg, Germany; St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the World Cup event at the Utah Olympic Park in Park City. “We project 1,000 to 2,000 spectators for the races, with the same top athletes competing to become the World Cup champion and to qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics,” Bird said.
According to Bird, the events should be the most exciting ever because athletes are racing at the greatest speeds ever seen in these sports. “Bobsled and skeleton athletes will be able to reach speeds of more than 100 miles per hour on the new Olympic track in Vancouver,” she said, thanks to faster tracks and sleeker and faster sleds.
Curling is a team sport in which two teams take turns sliding a stone down the ice toward a target, called the “house,” and two “sweepers” use brooms to help direct the stone to the target.
Founded in Scotland in the 1500s, curling came to the United States in the 1830s and was a demonstration sport of three Winter Olympics before gaining Olympic medal status at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, according to Beverly Schroeder, director of member services for USA Curling. Since its 1998 debut as an official Olympic sport, curling has seen a surge in participation and interest through worldwide, televised coverage of the sport in the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, she said. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, the U.S. Men’s Fenson team won the bronze medal.
Schroeder believes the sport has appeal because it can be played by both men and women of all ages and is considered a “lifetime sport” like golf. There are an estimated 16,000 curlers registered in approximately 140-150 USA Curling clubs nationwide, and the organization gains about 1,000 new participants each year, she said.
In addition, the recent development of arena curling is increasing the sport’s popularity across the country. “Curling is being played more and more in warmer climates with the recent growth in arena events. Now, curling is being offered to areas in California, Texas, Tennessee and other warm-weather states,” Schroeder said.
For the first time, an arena will host the curling Olympic Trials. Broomfield Event Center in Broomfield, Colo., will host the 2010 Olympic Trials Feb. 21-28, 2009. “Our goal was to choose a site that will help us put on a great championship and a highly entertaining event,” said James Pleasants, vice president of championships for USA Curling. “We believe the upcoming 2010 Olympic Trials at the Broomfield Event Center will really raise the bar for curling events in the United States.”
Schroeder said 10 men’s and 10 women’s teams are expected to compete in the week-long Olympic Trials event; the winners of the men’s and women’s teams will decide USA Curling’s team for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Wheelchair curling—a relatively new sport, with the first World Wheelchair Championships held in 2002 in Switzerland—is growing internationally as well. More than 20 countries are now participating in wheelchair curling, Schroeder said. The U.S. Paralympic Curling team won bronze at the 2008 World Wheelchair Championships in Switzerland; it was the first medal for the U.S. wheelchair curling program. The U.S. Wheelchair Curling Team for the world championships, to be held in February at the Vancouver Paralympic Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, will be selected based upon results of the U.S. Wheelchair Curling Trials, Nov. 11-14 in Utica, N.Y.
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Sport REPORT
• Number of clubs
Bobsled and Skeleton: 2 Curling: 140+ Luge: 4 • Number of participants Bobsled and Skeleton: 300 Curling: 16,000 Luge: 1,000 • Number of events annually Bobsled and Skeleton: 6 national events Curling: 16 national events Luge: 2-4 national races • Targeted areas of expansion Bobsled and Skeleton: Attracting more athletes into the sport, making it more mainstream in the United States Curling: Creating more arena events, making the sport more mainstream in the United States Luge: Making the sport more mainstream in the United States Contact: Bobsled and Skeleton: Amanda Bird, (518) 523-1842, abird@usbsf.com, www.usbsf.com Curling: Beverly Schroeder, (715) 344-1199, Beverly.schroeder@usacurl.org, www.usacurl.org Luge: Jon Lundin, (518) 523-2071, ext. 112, info@usaluge.org, www.usaluge.org |
In addition, wheelchair curling became an Olympic sport with the 2006 Paralympic Games in Torino, Italy, and will be in the upcoming 2010 Paralympic Games in Vancouver as well.
To help curlers advance their skills, USA Curling conducts four summer junior training camps and two high-performance camps for elite athletes each year, as well as youth programs. “We want to help youth athletes develop their careers in curling and get them excited about their future in curling” Schroeder said, adding that officials believe USA Curling will continue to experience rising participation and spectatorship as a result of its growing programs and increased exposure.
“Luge is one of the fastest sports on ice, where athletes slide in speeds of excess of 90 miles per hour,” said Jon Lundin, media and public relations manager for USA Luge. French for “sled,” luge has been a part of the Winter Olympics since 1964.
Our premiere event, the ‘Super Bowl’ of luge, is the world championships, held each year except during the Winter Olympics year,” Lundin said. The 2009 World Luge Championships will be held Feb. 2-9 at Mt. Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, which last hosted the world championships in 1983.
The luge track at Mt. Van Hoevenberg opened in 2000 and is considered “one of the most technically challenging tracks in the world,” Lundin said, adding that approximately 4,000-5,000 spectators will get to experience the sport in a unique way because they can get close to the action—which will have men and women competitors, between 90-110 athletes, racing at speeds of more than 85 miles per hour. “Everyone [in luge] competing in the 2010 Olympics will be at this race.”
The Luge World Cup Finale, scheduled for Feb. 20-22, 2009, on the Olympic track in Whistler, British Columbia, is the last in a nine-event World Cup race series. “Based on what everyone is talking about, this could be the world’s fastest luge track, with athletes exceeding more than 100 miles per hour,” Lundin said.