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Beyond the medals: Curling as social infrastructure

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Curling is once again among the most-watched events, with the Winter Olympics underway in Italy. For a brief period, this wonderful sport becomes a shared national reference point.

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Every Olympic and Paralympic cycle, we measure curling success in medals. The real contribution of curling, however, extends far beyond the podium. Curling supports what we call social fitness — the capacity to build, sustain and renew meaningful social connections over time.

At a time when governments and health systems are scrambling to address growing isolation and loneliness, curling shows how everyday institutions that organize people’s time, expectations and care for one another build meaningful social connections.

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Research repeatedly shows the places where people curl emerge as a vital form of social infrastructure, built from relationships, routines and shared responsibility. Social fitness is shaped by environments that sustain connection. Curling facilities rely on repeated, in-person participation, often weekly and over many years, where people return to the same space and encounter others who differ in age, ability, background and life circumstance.

These repeated encounters create familiarity, trust and a sense of being known.

Curling’s structure reinforces this relational work. Players call their own infractions, acknowledge mistakes and resolve disputes together, often without an official present. This means curlers regularly practise shared norms of fairness, accountability and informal self-governance, features increasingly rare in modern sport.

How people enter curling also matters. Where participation once followed family lines (“I curl because my parents curled”), we now increasingly hear, “I curl because someone invited me.” Belonging in curling depends less on excellence than on showing up, participating and contributing to a shared experience.

In this way, curling functions as a social technology that actively builds social fitness rather than assuming it already exists.

None of this happens without work. Clubs depend on volunteers to do the often invisible labour that keeps participation possible. Through this work, volunteers develop leadership skills and relational competence that extend well beyond the club.

Much of this social infrastructure is maintained by women, who have long acted as the architects and carriers of curling culture. They sustain participation by remembering names and stories, noticing who has not been around and modelling care alongside competition.

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These forms of labour are often invisible, yet central to curling’s capacity to build social fitness.

At a time of widespread social disconnection, curling offers a place to practise being with others, to experience shared purpose and to feel supported during difficult times.

By sitting around after games or spending days together at a bonspiel, curlers share successes and good fortune, as well as stories of loss, illness, job disruption and family breakdown. At its best, curling provides continuity — a reason to leave the house in winter, a group that notices when someone is struggling and a community that looks out for its members.

Admittedly, the social benefits of curling are fragile and uneven, shaped by club culture, policy decisions and access to resources. This is why current efforts to improve accessibility, inclusion, safety and sustainability matter so much — they determine who gets to benefit from what curling offers.

As attention focuses on the Games in Italy, we ought to look beyond the podium. If we care about rebuilding social connections in Canada, we would do well to pay attention to everyday institutions, such as curling clubs, that teach people how to be with one another.

Heather Mair is a professor and chair of the department of recreation and leisure studies at the University of Waterloo. Troy Glover is a professor in the same department.

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