With the deepening of the Winter Olympic games schedule, the enthusiasm of the people for ice and snow sports has gradually entered a climax. As the first project of the Chinese team to appear in this Winter Olympics, curling took the lead in becoming an example of the Winter Olympics "driving 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports", which attracted the attention of foreign media.
On the evening of February 2, the second day of the Chinese New Year, the curling mixed doubles event began to compete for the group round robin. The Chinese duo of Fan Suyuan and Ling Zhi defeated the last runner-up Swiss team 7:6 to get the opening red, which was also the debut of the Chinese sports delegation at the Winter Olympics. Because it was the Spring Festival holiday, this game quickly detonated the enthusiasm of the people for curling, and everyone imitated curling outdoors and indoors.
In short video platforms such as Douyin, netizens posted a variety of novel curling new ways to play: woks, steamers, kettles, homemade "curling" and various types of "ice brushes" to fight, whether outdoor or indoor, they are having a lot of fun. Topics such as #All Things Can Curl #, #Winter Olympics Folk Jug#, #Folk Curling Ceiling# quickly climbed the Douyin hot list, and also attracted foreign media.
On February 11, the US media published the article "Pressure Cooker, Wok, Plastic Pot... The Winter Olympics set off a "folk homemade curling" fever" as the title, reporting this folk boom.
Curling used in the Olympics is usually mined and polished from a remote island in Scotland by a company with a history of more than 170 years. Such curling is not easy to obtain, and the Chinese people have used their brains to use sliding kettles, casseroles, woks, pressure cookers, ice cubes instead, and even completely homemade.
The report lists various ideas of Chinese netizens who make their own curling. For example, a Douyin netizen in Inner Mongolia spent three hours making a curling replica very close to the original with ice cubes, including the handle that the athletes used to guide the curling. "Our hometown didn't contribute to the Olympics, and I didn't have the opportunity to go to the games, so I had the idea of making Olympic rings and curling," he said. ”
Another enthusiast used cucumbers frozen in a basin of water as a handle and played "curling" on the ground at home. His homemade "curling" slides nicely on the floor tiles, even if the body movements are not flexible enough.
Another key fixture of curling, the curling brush used by athletes to rub wildly on the ice to influence the direction of curling, is more accessible: a broom or mop can complete the task.
For the creativity and enthusiasm of Douyin netizens "everything can curl", the US media commented that this makes the Winter Olympics more promising to achieve the goal of "driving 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports".
Due to geographical location and other reasons, many people cannot experience skiing and ice skating, but the "curling" sport adapted by folk wisdom can also be carried out indoors on the ice surface, which greatly reduces the threshold for participating in the ice and snow sports of the Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics have driven the public's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports, and the enthusiasm has stimulated creativity, so that everyone can enjoy the competition, participate in sports and share on the short video platform to feel the charm of ice and snow sports together.