History was created on Tuesday morning at the Giftland Mall when Rayad Husain, General Secretary of the Guyana Curling Federation (GCF) introduced the sport for the first time in the Caribbean and South America via a portable curling ring to the media in the presence of the President of the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) K.A. Juman-Yassin and other partners.
(L-R) Canadian High Commissioner Pierre Giroux, GOA President KA Juman Yassin, Rayad Husain and Chad McMullan
Husain, who is a professional Curler for over 20 years, noted that the Federation was established to provide athletes in and out of Guyana, with opportunities to represent the country in international competitions sanctioned by the World Curling Federation.
Future plans of the federation according to Husain include the sending of a curling team to the Olympic Winter Games possibly in 2022 at Beijing.
The GCF was granted a Conditional Membership status from the World Curling Federation at its yearly Congress in 2016. This means that GCF now has access to various development programmes designed to promote and develop the sport to in Guyana.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Guyana Times Sport, Husain pointed out that the GCF currently has two competitive athletes, one being Husain himself while the other is his sister Farzana. They are based in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, and will be looking to compete in the mixed doubles event at the Winter Olympics South Korea in 2018.
However this is dependent on if after a one-year period, the GCF is successful in their application for Provisional Membership status, which would allow the athletes to compete in international events.
Curling is a 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.
