Guyana Curling Federation officially launched

May 17, 2017 Sports

GOA President to head GCF

The Guyana Curling Federation (GCF) is the newest Sports Association formed in Guyana, following the establishment of the Guyana Baseball League, another North American Sport.
According to its President K. Juman Yassin, the GCF was formed to not only govern and promote the Winter Olympic Sport of Curling to Guyanese both within Guyana and abroad, but to also raise the profile of Winter Sport within the Caribbean region by working with other similar bodies and organizations.
This is the first Curling Federation in the South America or the Caribbean and presently has two competitive athletes who both reside in Ontario, Canada.
Canada based Guyanese Rayad Husain, who is the General Secretary of the GCF and Farzana Husain are two and have reportedly and have been participating in the sport for many years in Canada with great success.
“The Federation was established to also provide athletes both in and out of Guyana opportunities to represent the country in International competitions as governed by the World Curling Federation,” said Yassin, who is also the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA).
According to Yassin the Federation recently received Conditional Membership status from the World Curling Federation to become the 56th Member at its World Curling Congress in Stockholm, Sweden in September 2016.
This allows the GCF to access development programmes to promote the sport to the Guyanese people.
After a one-year period, the next step will be to apply for Provisional Membership status, which would allow our athletes to compete in International events.
The first event that the GCF will organize is to send a team to the 2018 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship, which will take place at the end of April 2018 at a site to be announced by the World Curling Federation.
“First and foremost, the goal of the Guyana Curling Federation is to raise awareness to the Guyanese people about the sport of curling through the use of Street Curling. Street Curling is an iceless rink produced by Canadian company and partner to the GCF, Rock Solid Productions Inc,” explained Husain.
“Through the use of this rink, we can bring a taste of what curling is about and how it’s played without the need to build a regulation ice rink,” Yassin added.
Ultimately, the Federation would like to inspire the youth to not only take up an interest in curling but to lead healthy and active lifestyles.
According the GCF Head, through time, the goal of the Federation is to send a curling team to the Olympics Winter games hopefully as soon as the 2022 Olympics in Beijing in Mixed Doubles, as well as to produce Medals in the World Championships.
The Guyana Curling Federation can be found on Face book (www.facebook.com/GuyanaCurling)on Twitter (@GuyanaCurling) and by Email (guyanacurling@gmail.com)
Curling is a ‘Winter Sport’ in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice towards 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 towards the house, a circular target marked on the ice.
Each team has eight stones. 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. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.
The curler can induce a curved path by causing the stone to slowly turn as it slides, and the path of the rock may be further influenced by two sweepers with brooms who accompany it as it slides down the sheet, using the brooms to alter the state of the ice in front of the stone. A great deal of strategy and teamwork go into choosing the ideal path and placement of a stone for each situation, and the skills of the curlers determine how close to the desired result the stone will achieve. Curling officially became a Winter Olympic sport in 1998.
(Sean Devers)

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