AS I SEE IT COLUMN: To be a true sport, curling must get rid of this

There can be no question that curling is an ascendant sport. TV viewership is high, it’s one of the winter Olympics’ most popular sports, there’s a new league with an interesting format starting up; overall it looks like the trend lines in curling are all positive.

But if curling wants to be regarded as a true sport, there is one thing it absolutely has to change. If it wants to be recognized as a real sport – and by ‘real’ I mean sharing a foundational element seen in every other team sport on earth – this one thing has to go.

Without this change, curling will still be super popular in Canada and in pockets of the United States and Europe. But without this change, curling can never really be considered an equal to all team sports that share one basic, common, and universally-adhered-to truism. In a real sport, you can’t quit just because you feel like it.

Curling is the only team sport in the solar system where, if you don’t want to play anymore because you think the game is out of reach, you can simply “take off the gloves and shake hands.”

At the highest levels of curling, giving up is normal. Imagine a Stanley Cup or World Series game where one team called it quits early because they had no chance of winning. It’s utterly unthinkable because quitting simply isn’t acceptable in real sports – it’s not in the DNA of true athletic competition.

Athletes are taught at a very young age to “do your very best” and “never give up.” Or as the immortal Shoresy says “You go ‘til you can’t go no more.”

In real sports it is inconceivable, highly disrespectful and poor sportsmanship to quit before the game is over. It would be an insult to the other team, to the sport you’re playing, and most importantly, to yourself.

Quick, can you name a team sport where teams can throw in the towel before the game is over? You can’t, for one simple reason — because it doesn’t happen in any other team sport.

If you ever played sports and have been on the bad end of a lopsided score with plenty of time left in the game, you know full well how challenging it is to grind to the end when you have no hope and no chance of winning.

Yet it’s exactly in those tough moments where sport builds character, resilience and good sportsmanship. You suck it up and play to the bitter end, no matter what the score, no matter how humiliated you feel.

Nothing good is learned when a team takes the easy way out. Nothing is gained by giving up.

I don’t buy the argument that shaking hands early is okay because it is a time-honoured tradition in curling’s history. (Remember, ashtrays and drink holders are also part of curling’s history.)

As for the idea that shaking hands early is somehow a sign of respect to the winning team, that doesn’t make any logical sense. The losing team in curling can show the same respect to the winners at the end of the game as they supposedly do by quitting a few ends early.

Every coach in every team sport encourages her or his athletes to try their hardest and do their best, all the way to the end, no matter how hopeless the score is.

No other team sport in the universe condones quitting; none. If it wants to be treated like a legitimate sport, curling must force games to be played to the final end.

There is nothing edifying about giving up.

“Winners never quit. Quitters never win.” – Vince Lombardi