After the Turin Olympics, Panetta says the group will get more serious, create a legal entity and formally petition the IOC. He notes that there's precedent for Olympic teams representing entities that aren't nations, such as the American territories, Hong Kong and Palestine.
"If it gets to the point where D.C.'s in the Olympics, that's when it's real athletes," says Panetta, nicknamed "The Ice Man" for this endeavor. "There's better curlers in D.C., but we're the best curlers who have our own Olympic organizing committee."
Panetta reports that the D.C. curlers have now actually curled twice, having done so once since a Feb. 2 Washington Post column by Marc Fisher reported that they'd been once. They train at the closest rink, which is in Laurel, Md. In other words, in Olympic terms, it's in another country as far as the D.C. curlers are concerned.
He says the "real curlers" there have been great. Curlers can be sensitive about their sport because it's so often made sport of. Fisher's column in the Post referred to it as "the comic relief of the Winter Games," which didn't go over well in curling circles. Panetta says he's heard from some concerned curlers, but "no one's been outright hostile to us."
"Curling is one of those sports that people are serious about, but the media always likes to make fun of it," he says. "So they wanted to make sure we weren't another opportunity for them to make fun of curling."
Panetta takes every opportunity to say the group takes curling seriously as a real, and difficult sport. I do the same thing. I like to joke around about curling, but I seriously and unironically love it, and I defy you to give it a fair chance during the coming Olympics and not find yourself drawn in.
For now, the team is a publicity stunt. The D.C. Olympic Committee wants to raise consciousness of the voting rights issue outside Washington in hopes that Congress will feel some heat to give the District voting representation, something polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans favoring once they learn a little about the issue.
The D.C. Fairness in Representation Act, or D.C. FAIR Act, introduced last year by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., would give the District a voting representative. Washington is a Democratic city, so as a tradeoff for Republicans, Utah would get a new at-large representative.
The DCOC says the effort has resulted in more than 10,000 letters of support to the IOC in the two weeks since launch. The D.C. curlers have even picked up a sponsor, Labatt Blue Beer, which has outfitted them in hockey sweaters for the moment, though Panetta says togs more like the polo shirt and warmup jacket look favored by actual would-be Olympic curlers are on their way.
It's an impressive beginning and it just goes to show what a bunch of publicists can do when they get excited about something. The press release itself was sent by team member Shawn "Get them Doggies Rollin" Rolland, who works for the P.R. firm Ketchum.
Ketchum's slogan is "The right tools, the right people," but on the "about" page of its Web site, that slogan is rendered in a fancy font that makes it look on first glance like "The right to fool the right people," which I think would be a dynamite slogan for a P.R. firm.
I digress again. And suddenly I'm thirsty. I do love curling.
The D.C. Olympic Committee is looking for athletes and coaches to fill out other teams. You have to live in the the city, the Web site proclaims. "Sorry, but that's how we roll here at DCOC. This isn't the Miss America contest."
I don't know what kind of odds D.C. residents face in getting the voting rights they deserve as Americans. But I'm thinking that if Georgetown can beat Duke, the city ought to be able to find 12 guys who can handle Angola, and maybe even Puerto Rico.
Previous column: No Al Michaels on "MNF"
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive.
Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)
Salon Directory (browse by topic)