Centre of the house: youthful dominance and the creation of curling’s age order

Canadian curling, traditionally one of the only nationally celebrated sports to venerate the bodies of old(er) athletes, has shifted its emphasis to the bodies of the young and visibly fit (Allain and Marshall Citation2018). We argue that this change not only brings curling in line with most other sports, but signals a new alignment with an age order privileging youth in sport. Exploring the performance of curling (via interviews with older men who curl), the institutional apparatus around curling (via Curling Canada annual reports) and the representation of curling (via media coverage of older curlers), we find that all of these facets of the sport evince a sporting age order that displaces the old, positioning them at best as inspirations to youthful (and thus more important) curlers, and at worst as symbols of the decaying relevance of the sport.