The Kilsyth Curling Club, in Kilsyth, Scotland, claims to be the oldest curling club in the world, being established in 1716.
Curling was being played in Kilsyth from at least the 16th century, and in 1716 the Kilsyth Curling Club was established, [1] making it the oldest in the world. [2] [3] [4] This claim is disputed in other sources, which give either the Kinross Curling Club, established in 1668, [5] or a curling club from Muthill, established in 1739, the honour. [6]
The club still exists and also has a women's division. It plays in provincial competitions in the Stirlingshire province, organised by the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. [7]
Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called rocks, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones once. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.
Colzium House and Estate is about 500 metres to the north-east of Kilsyth, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. The present house dates from 1783 and was extended and modernised in 1861. The name may mean "defile leap".
The curling event at the 1924 Winter Olympics was contested only by men. It was the first curling event in Olympic history.
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A bonspiel is a curling tournament, consisting of several games, often held on a weekend. Until the 20th century most bonspiels were held outdoors, on a frozen freshwater loch. Today almost all bonspiels are held indoors on specially prepared artificial ice.
David Matthew Murdoch is a retired Scottish curler from Stirling. As the Scotland skip, he and his former team of Ewan MacDonald, Warwick Smith, Euan Byers and Peter Smith are the 2006 and 2009 World Curling Champions. Representing Great Britain, he has been skip at three Winter Olympics, Torino 2006, finishing fourth, Vancouver 2010, finishing fifth and Sochi 2014, where he won an Olympic silver medal. He served as national and Olympic coach for British Curling since September 2018, before being named Curling Canada's high-performance director in early 2023.
The Royal Caledonian Curling Club (RCCC), branded as Scottish Curling is a curling club in Edinburgh, Scotland. It developed the first official rules for the sport, and is the governing body of curling in Scotland. The RCCC was founded on 25 July 1838 in Edinburgh, and granted its royal charter by Queen Victoria in 1843, after she had witnessed a demonstration of the sport played on the polished ballroom floor of Scone Palace the previous year.
Robin Welsh was a Scottish sportsman who represented the Royal Caledonian Curling Club as a curler in the Winter Olympics, represented Scotland in tennis and played international rugby union for Scotland.
Sport plays a central role in Scottish culture. The temperate, oceanic climate has played a key part in the evolution of sport in Scotland, with all-weather sports like association football and golf dominating the national sporting consciousness. However, many other sports are played in the country, with popularity varying between sports and between regions.
Campaign for a Scottish Olympic Team (C-ScOT) was a pressure group in Scotland, established in 2005, which aimed to persuade politicians to establish a team to represent Scotland at the Olympic Games.
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Michael Goodfellow is a retired Scottish curler. He currently is employed as a coach for Scottish Curling.
Events from the year 1716 in Scotland.
The beginning of the 18th century saw sport acquire increasing importance in the lives of people in England and Ireland. Professionalism was by then established in the major gambling sports of bare-knuckle boxing, cricket and horse racing.
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Ross Paterson is a retired Scottish curler from Glasgow. During his career, he represented Scotland at four World Men's Curling Championships and four European Curling Championships, winning a bronze medal at both the 2018 World Men's Curling Championship and the 2019 European Curling Championships. He also won silver at the 2007 Winter Universiade and bronze at the 2005 World Junior Curling Championships in his junior career. In 2018, he skipped his team to victory at the 2018 National Grand Slam of Curling event. He is a two-time champion at the Scottish Men's Curling Championship, winning the title in both 2016 and 2022.
The Scottish Mixed Doubles Curling Championship is the national curling championship for mixed doubles in Scotland. The Championship has been held annually since 2007 and the winners proceed to represent Scotland at the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship.