Curling

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If Scotland should win a gold medal in curling at the Winter Games, at least one Canadian will be cheering loudly. The same could hold true if Norway wins. Or Sweden or Denmark or Russia. That Canadian is Lino Di Iorio, an inventor from Richmond Hill, Ont., who has helped almost every top curling nation in the world except one - his own.

For the past decade, Di Iorio has been building machines and creating methods for improving curling deliveries, sweeping techniques and consistency of rocks. With degrees in physics and math, he has worked out a variety of systems that have been snapped up by numerous countries looking to gain an edge on the rest of the world.

So successful is his work that the one country that hasn't bought into it - Canada - is in danger of falling behind when it comes to research into the game. Di Iorio may end up doing more to knock Canada off its perch as the world's top curling nation than any person actually throwing a rock or sweeping a broom.

It's frustrating for Di Iorio because he tried several times to work with Canadian curling but was always turned down. And now there's some insult added to the injury.

Two weeks ago, at two separate press conferences, the Canadian Curling Association and the Canadian Olympic Committee trumpeted great results into research done on sweeping and the delivery. The studies, one at the University of Western Ontario and another at the University of Alberta, were funded by the Own the Podium program and received great attention in the news media.

However, elsewhere in the world, the curling fraternity was snickering. Much of what was discovered in these studies was already common knowledge to those who had been working with Di Iorio. And while being cautious not to criticize the work without seeing all the details (full results of the Canadian studies won't be revealed until after the Games), the inventor wasn't too impressed.

"We knew they were conducting the studies and so we were interested," Di Iorio said. "Once we took a look at the objectives and heard about the testing, we were skeptical of the methods."

For one thing, Di Iorio said, the tests on sweeping relied on a human being to throw the rock. That can create all sorts of inconsistencies, he said. For Di Iorio's tests, he built a rock-throwing machine that, much like a pitching machine in baseball, can throw the exact same shot every time, eliminating many human variables.

"They're not using what I consider scientifically reliable testing methods," he said.

As well as the rock-throwing machine, Di Iorio was one of the first people to use video analysis on the curling delivery. He came up with the idea of interval timing, using stopwatches that allow a sweeper to know instantly if a rock is heavy or light, and he has devised something called deceleration time, which allows all team members to slide consistently.

His best-known addition to the game might be the Balance Plus slider, the shoe-bottom Teflon that has a depression in it near the ball of the foot. That better distributes the player's weight and creates a more even slide. Almost every top player in the game swears by it.

Di Iorio tried many times to get the CCA interested in his work. After showing his wares to several officials at one gathering, he was told that curling was a game of touch and feel, and there was no place for his scientific mumbo-jumbo. In 1997, at the CCA's invitation, he set up a display at the first Olympic curling trials in Brandon, and not one CCA coach or official came to see it.

"I was hurt, sure," Di Iorio admitted. "I knew what I had was a good thing and that I could help, but they just weren't interested for whatever reason."

Like a spurned lover, he moved on, and in 1999 he took his act across the pond, where the Scots jumped on it. They bought in immediately and made Di Iorio a technical consultant to work with the national teams.

"Lino and I got on great and he was not in demand in Canada, at least not then," Mike Hay wrote in an e-mail. "I couldn't figure that out, but we could see great potential, hence a great working relationship that is still strong today."

Hay, a former world champion, was the national coach for the British team from 2000 to 2006 and is now the Olympic performance manager for winter sports for the British Olympic Association. His brother, David, now handles the coaching duties.

In 2000, with Di Iorio's help, the Scots conducted research into sweeping, examining everything from broom material, length of stroke and downward pressure on the broom. Sweepers were hooked up to a backpack computer that also measured such things as their heart rate and the temperature change in the ice. It's similar to what the Canadian studies looked at, but nearly a decade before.

"Lino brought some fresh ideas to the game from a non-curling perspective," David Hay said. "A very clever guy who was always willing to challenge traditional thoughts and ideas on the game."

It's perhaps no coincidence that a Scottish men's rink has finished either first or second in four of the last five world championships and that David Murdoch is one of the favourites to win the gold in Vancouver.

Need another example? Di Iorio began working in Norway, and a year and a half after his machines and systems arrived, Pal Trulsen led the country to gold at the 2002 Winter Games.

Coincidence? Perhaps, but both nations praise Di Iorio.

Gerry Peckham, the CCA's director of high performance, said there's no ill will toward Di Iorio. He's a fan.

"We need more people like Lino to challenge the commonly held perceptions in the game," he said. "He's a great thinker and a great contributor. The problem we had was back in the day, there was no money for research. We couldn't afford to do any testing."

Di Iorio believes he can help curlers play better and that goes for the grassroots of the game too. He's worried current teaching methods used by Canadian instructors are wrong.

"The problem is they're teaching a flawed system," he said. "What they're telling people to do makes it impossible to come out on target."

And he warns that Canadian curling could get left behind if it doesn't wake up.

"We have great curlers in this country and they know how to play, how to win," he said. "But I'm not sure about the next generation the way they're being taught. What happens when all these veterans retire? Will Canada be as good? I think we could be in for a rude awakening."