Lunching steals march on curling

Winter Olympics: Lunching has become an Olympic sport in Salt Lake City and, despite the freezing temperatures, attention has also turned to the hopes of two American sisters bidding desperately for gold in synchronised swimming.

"We were very happy when the committee saw the challenges in such an event and lunching was made an Olympic sport," said Geoff Hansen, the winner of the first gold medal for the event. "Lunching is a full-blown contact sport loaded with punishing ambiguity and emotional twists and turns that dwarf the grand slalom."

Hansen, who is not actually built like a world-class luncher, is an actor taking part in the world premiere of 10 specially commissioned short plays by Utah writers to coincide with the Winter Olympics. In The Gold Lunch, by Ron Carlson, he plays the part of a man who wins Olympic gold for the subtle way he manages to lunch with his ex-wife, a style that gave him a 9.999 from the judges.

The plays, entitled Cabbies, Cowboys and the Tree of the Weeping Virgin, were the idea of the Salt Lake Acting Company, which is well known in the area for its sharp satire. In Julie Jensen's Water Lilies, two sisters, Betty and Bella, discuss the double mandible and the demands of their chosen sport of synchronised swimming: "This is the thing about water ballet. You repeat the same two minutes of your life over and over again. . . And then, preposterous as it may sound, someone else sits out there and judges it."

The plays, and the rest of Salt Lake City, are doing their best to challenge the normal caricatures of teetotal, God-fearing souls by poking fun at their image. There are T-shirts for sale which show a man followed by four pregnant women and the slogan "Welcome to Utah - Polygamists crossing" and shot glasses featuring a Mormon Temple and the slogan "A shot a day keeps the missionaries at bay".

But if lunching and synchronised swimming are not really part of the games, curling certainly is and its administrators are hoping that these games may finally help the sport to break into the national consciousness. Although it is 500 years since the sport was invented in Scotland, curling became an Olympic sport only in 1998.

Now, curling's admirers believe that television could help them to win new fans and, more importantly, participants. The cable channel MSNBC is to screen at least 21 of the 98 men's and women's matches in Salt Lake City, some of them at prime time. To capitalise on what they hope will be a fresh interest in the sport, which has a low profile in the US, the 130 curling clubs across the country are to have open days in the hope of winning converts. The sport is also due a boost from the comedy film Men With Brooms, starring Leslie Nielsen and released next month.

But, if curling has only just established itself as an Olympic sport, another recreation is already hoping to join it: bridge. The bridge world arrived in Salt Lake City this week in an effort to prove that it is indeed a sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics.

Players are taking part in the World Bridge Federation's IOC grand prix championship and they will be arguing that the game demands the same skills, team work and concentration as any other Olympic event. Organisers say bridge should be "a ground-breaking sport for the Olympics" - which may test again the theory that it is not a sport if you can smoke while doing it.

So far, however, looking round Salt Lake City yesterday, it seems that if any new sport is to make it by 2006, lunching must be in with a very good shot.

With the opening ceremony taking place overnight, bad weather forced the cancellation of the men's ski jumping event, the only competition event scheduled on the opening day of the Games. Winds gusting at high speeds across the slopes of the Wasatch Mountains, east of Salt Lake City, forced the cancellation of the men's K90 qualification round.