For the past decade or so, we have been fans of curling. We find it so calming to watch the stones glide across the ice, while also feeling all of the anxious feels of the frantic sweeping that takes place. It’s such a fun sport to watch and we’ve always been fans of Matt Hamilton, who as a member of the Men’s Team USA Curling where he helped secure the first-ever curling gold medal for the US at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, and he also competed the following year at the Winter Games in 2022.
We took some time to hang out with Matt to talk about curling, dynamics of the game, his partnership with Swiffer, and how important it is to him to grow this sport, which has been on the rise!
ATHLEISURE MAG: Matt, it is so good to connect with you! We are such a fan of curling. Love the sport, seeing you play, and it’s good to talk with you today.
MATT HAMILTON: Thank you! It’s a lot of fun to play. So you should, you should find a place and get into it. It’s way more fun than just watching.
AM: Whenever it’s on, it’s always something that we love watching. It looks like it’s a lot of work to see athletes really working those stones to get them across the ice. So, I don’t know how good we’d be on that front, but we love the camaraderie and the emotions involved!
When did you fall in love with curling, and when did you think about it as a career?
MH: So, I fell in love with curling - I first was exposed to it in, like, 2003, my dad was doing it, but I was like a 12-year-old kid. So, like, what is Dad’s doing, that’s an old man’s sport?
AM: Right.
MH: I don’t want to play that and literally, a couple months later, one of my buddies asked me if I wanted to do it. So then it was like, oh yeah, it’s cool!
AM: Haha right!
MH: Absolutely. Sorry, Dad. It just took a little extra push. And I would say it would have been four years after that. I got picked up on the defending US National Junior team and we ended up going to Worlds that year, and we won the World Championships. So, that’s when I was kind of like, these are all my peers, like if I can beat them now, as long as I stick with it, there’s no reason I can’t beat them. You know, in an Olympics, if I, if I ever make one, so I just got to make sure I keep practicing stay with it. That’s when I was like, convinced I wanted to do it. I will say there’s there’s no such thing as a professional curler in the United States.
AM: We can imagine.
MH: Right? I have a regular job, then I have curling, and I have social media stuff. I’m definitely a regular guy, I have a fairly normal job, I work on radio and I have my own radio show (Editor’s Note: Jim, Matt, and Molly is an afternoon sports-comedy radio show on 100.5 ESPN Madison as well as being available as a podcast – the hosts are Matt, Jim Rutledge, and Molly Brown). It’s, it’s fun to say, I’m a professional curler, but if you want to be correct – it’s semi-pro because curling is not as lucrative as basketball or football.
AM: Well, that is true.
For those that may not be familiar with the sport, can you kind of tell us about the mechanics, and what position you play and how do you score points and ultimately, how do you win?
MH: So, during the 2018 Olympics, I was the second, which means I throw second. There’s 8 stones per team, and you alternate throwing. Right now, what they do to start the game is they throw a draw, which is like a rock that stops in play.
They try and run as close as they can to the center, and then they measure it, and whoever gets the closest gets to go last, which is called the hammer. It’s the last shot. If you have the last shot, you should score. That’s the theory behind it. There’s these 12 foot rings, and it looks like a target or a bullseye. One of the big misconceptions is the rings don’t mean anything like being right in the middle of the bullseye is no different than just barely touching the edge. The goal of the game is to get as many of your rocks closer to that middle, then the opponent’s closest stone.
AM: Right.
MH: So if you don’t have any in the rings, mine could be anywhere they’re worth a point. The rings are actually there visually during the game as you’re strategizing how to score and where to put rocks. I can look down from the top and try and visually see which one’s closer. If it was just a big circle with a hole in the middle, it would be very hard to tell. So now, those rings are just like reference points so I can make that quicker decision at which one’s closer and why I would play one shot versus another.
AM: We always like asking when you have athletes that are doing a particular sport, what are the workouts that you do to optimize yourself in that sport? As mentioned at the top, there is a lot of upper body strength that’s going on, and so are there things that you do for that?
MH: For me and my position at second, I’ll throw 2 of the 8 rocks, but I sweep for the other 6.
AM: Right.
MH: So, there’s a lot of, sweeping involved, and it’s way more physically demanding than most people think. Maybe that’s a credit to us, like athletes everywhere, like when you’re very, very good at something, you make it look easy. That’s definitely the case in curling with sweeping. So for me, it’s a lot of back, shoulders and pectoral muscles. So I do obviously work on everything. Your legs are important because you gotta drive out of the hack (Editor’s Note: A rubber block embedded in the ice at each end of the rink, which curlers use to push off from to gain momentum for their delivery). The core strength for balance, and maintaining while you’re sweeping which is super important.
Well, the biggest thing I think is different about curlers is a lot of, like interval training, so sweeping is something you do during the shot, right? A shot could be up to 30 seconds long, so you might have to be going in like sweeping as hard as you can for 30 seconds.
AM: Yeah.
MH: You know, I would say to anybody, do something physical for 30 seconds straight, like you will be out of breath!
AM: Right!
MH: The other team has to throw, and then you’re right back at it. So you might have to sweep another one right away for another 30 seconds. You might have to throw, and then you have a finesse shot something where you need a lot of finesse and touch. If your heart rate’s at a buck 60, it is not easy to throw that finesse shot - you got endorphins and adrenaline running. Like, that’s not easy. So for us, it’s a lot of interval or circuit training where I might not go with the highest weights, but I’m gonna go for a minute doing whatever. Maybe it’s rowing as fast as I can, and I’m going to take about a minute to try and recover, and then do it again or go to the next exercise, and do that for a minute. So rather than rep based, it’s time based workouts.
AM: We have such a respect, because when we’re watching it, you see all of that and although it would be great to try it, we realize there is so much sweeping across the ice. Ours arms ache every time we see it as it is very intense, but it’s very cool.
MH: The beauty of this partnership that I’ve got with Swiffer is that I sweep really hard when I am on the ice, but when I’m at home, I don’t need to sweep that hard with the Swiffer it’s way easier. I prefer sweeping at home, then I do on the ice, that’s for sure.
AM: Plus, when you guys are on the knees and going in, we always think about people with knee issues. But it is so exciting to watch it and even with all of the action and the precision, it is very calming, while being aggressive as you mentioned with the intervals on and off.
So you competed in 2018 at the Olympics and won Gold, and you also competed in 2022, and you have a gold medal as well. What does it mean to you to play on such a global stage at the Olympics?
MH: It’s an honor and it’s such a privilege to get to represent the United States and with curling being such a unique sport, what other sports do you have the athletes mic’d up where you can hear everything that I am saying and I am not wearing a helmet. You can see my face. You can see the expressions and I really feel like our sport really shows the emotion and feelings of players, in game. Having the opportunity to represent, like myself, on the world stage, but also like the United States and trying to convey that we’re regular people and really awesome people that just want to put on a show and play at a high level, I think it is great. Pressure is a privilege, so having that opportunity - there was a lot of pressure, but it was thrilling and I wouldn’t obviously change it for the world.
AM: Although you’re not competing this year at the Olympics, do you plan on trying again for 2030?
MH: I’m a little up in the air on that. I think I have the juice to keep going. The problem is, I think, some of my teammates are going to retire and I’m an old guy, so I don’t know how much young guys are going to want to play with an old dude. We’re gonna see how things shake up. The team that went to the Olympics are good friends of ours. I actually talked for like an hour with a couple of the guys, just like how to pack for the Olympics, things to expect, how I dealt with media, and social media. People can be pretty brutal on social media too. I gave a good fair warning, and so hopefully they’ll ask me to play with them next year, but who knows? It’s up in the air. I think I’d like to play, but I’ve got a lot of, life changes coming up. We’ve got a kid on the way.
AM: Oh, congrats!
MH: My first one! I’m super excited about that. So we’ll see how that carves my time up. I don’t want to go into a potential Olympic run and not be able to give it my all. There’s a lot of things that I’m weighing back and forth right now.
AM: Well, you clearly have a passion for the sport. How are you working to pass it on to that next generation? When we think about when we first heard of curling, which has been over a decade as we started watching in 2012 and to see where it is now - a lot of people are aware of it and are playing it. Truthfully in the beginning we were always looking for Matt with the hair. What are you doing to keep people aware of it and to encourage them to play it?
MH: I mean, part of it is just playing it and self-promotion. I got a lot of good followers from the Olympics and because curling is always on my mind, it ends up being on my timeline. So I think that really helps. Getting that Gold medal and seeing the way curling blew up in the United States – I think that after the 2018 Olympics, there’s 10 to 15 new curling clubs that popped up in the United States. 8 or 9 of them were all in the South where you would not expect a curling club.
AM: Wow, not at all!
MH: Texas has a couple Arizona’s got one, Southern California’s got a club. Both the Carolinas have a club. Florida’s got a group, so like places you wouldn’t expect an ice sport. They are picking up and getting into curling, so being on the forefront of that curling explosion in the U.S. It’s been amazing so! Basically, what I tell everybody. It’s an amazing game. You can use it as something to get through the winter, that’s why my dad did it. He didn’t really like bowling, so it was a good way for him to look forward to something each week and get through the winter and it makes the time go by. Or, you could do what I did and be like, I’m all in. Yeah, I want to practice every day. I want to hit the gym. I want to travel to Canada, Europe, and Asia for curling tournaments and everywhere in between. There’s so much room for athletes of every level at curling that it really is such a great sport, and it’s so inclusive.
There’s common interest in the sport, but part of like the roots of the game is, when you’re done, you sit down with the other team and talk about life. Talk about the game, talk about curling the camaraderie. You kind of feel that sense of family with curling outside of just your direct teammates, so that’s what I think is really the most appealing part and why I would pitch this to people. If you’re looking for some of that camaraderie, meet new people in a town or just try something new, it’s just unparallel.
AM: And you mentioned Swiffer earlier, what does that partnership look like, and what are you doing with them?
MH: So super excited! After the 2018 Olympics, I would get people who dressed their kids up like me, and I got videos of people throwing random things on ice and using a Swiffer to sweep in front of it. So, when they finally contacted me, I was like, it’s about time!
AM: Exactly!
MH: This has been a match made in heaven for a long time. I was super excited, and they came here to my house. We did some filming, and I would spill stuff, and I used their Power Mop to clean up some of my messes. There’s no movie magic going on there. I just use the mop the way you normally would, and it was fantastic. It picked everything up and I got to try the new exclusive one, which is 10,000 scrubbing dots to help you pick up all the dirt and grime, and it does exactly what they advertised it to do. It is, it is an all-in-one cleaning system. So, I’m stoked on it because I got a bunch of stuff down in the basement for a future messes, but it was a great time and we cut up all the videos and I’ve seen them all and they’re hilarious. They’re very much my taste and show my personality, but the sweeping on the ice and sweeping at home is just so similar, and it’s just hilarious how this all worked out. I am so fortunate to be able to work with such a great group like Swiffer, because not only they’re quitting products work great, they see the humor in it and we had a great time!
IG @hamscurl
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | PG 94 ©2022 – IOC/Michael Smith – All rights reserved | PG 97 ©2022/International Olympic Committee (IOC)/PARR, Abbie (photographe Beijing 2022) |
Read the FEB ISSUE #122 of Athleisure Mag and see CURLING NATURE | Matt Hamilton in mag.
