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In curling matches, you can often see players wearing glasses. In other games, most of them wear contact lenses, so you can’t even find glasses, so why is it only appearing in curling?
Not only Korea’s Kim Eun-jung, but the ‘glasses seniors’ all over the world. There are so many seniors in glasses that 12 out of 36 main players from 9 countries participating in the Beijing Olympic women’s curling final qualifier wear glasses.
There’s a reason curlers wear glasses a lot. Nikkan Sports of Japan revealed this in a recent interview with player Koana Tori. Koana Tori is the most famous Japanese curling player with glasses.
“The curling alley is too dry,” said Koana. At first, I put on the lenses, but I couldn’t because of dry eye,” she said.
The biggest reason is that the stadium is dry. However, curling is a sport in which stones are thrown on the ice, and when it is full of ice, the humidity increases, so there is no reason why the stadium is dry. There is a reason here too.
Curling is one of the most demanding sports in the Olympics. Ice quality is so important that the error range of ice is smaller than in figure skating and speed skating. Therefore, temperature and humidity management is more thorough than other stadiums, and if the average ice rink maintains 40-50% humidity, the average curling stadium is only 35%. Without a dehumidifier, frost will fall on the ice, making it impossible to roll stones properly.
Humidity in Korea is in the range of 60 to 75% year-round, and if the day that falls below 35% lasts more than two days, a drying warning is issued.
In this situation, if you keep your eyes open until the stone arrives, you will have no choice but to look blurry or suffer from dry eye syndrome. Kim Eun-jung of Korean curling also went to competitions with lenses, and he said that he had his eyes open until the shot was made and his vision was blurred.
Not only that. There is a reason why curlers usually wear rimless glasses or large, round frames. This is because the frame of the glasses can get in the way when throwing stones. In fact, it is said that the size of the frame is important enough to affect the game.
It is known that Kim Eun-jung does not usually wear glasses, but only wears them during games. He said that he doesn’t have very bad eyesight, so it’s rather inconvenient to wear glasses in everyday life.
Curling is commonly known as a sport in which stones are steered by brushing them with a broom-like broom. Many people wonder how effective this broom will be. The answer to this is the shape of the curling arena ice.
The curling arena is not a regular ice sheet, but rather fine ice grains forming the surface like pebbles. Sprinkle water drops on ice to make gravel. Because of this, it is necessary to smooth the surface with brooming and adjust the direction. So, curling is both a sport on ice and a sport on gravel.
