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Steve Dawson

Have you seen the Chinese women's curling team? They look so demure - the personification of good-natured sporting competition. Such sweet-looking girls as well, clear skinned, studious, almost angelic; the kind you'd want to bring home to mother.

Until that is, the granite stone that they've dispatched towards the circular target, looses pace earlier than was intended and they start screaming at each other like commodity brokers as the price of gold bottoms out.

The screaming, I'm led to believe, is the instruction to sweep the floor. Can you imagine the racket just prior to Lunar New Year when the floor is a little dirty and a horde of well-wishing relatives are expected the next day bearing red packets?

Sweeping the ice in curling is the main difference between it and its temperate-weather sister crown green bowls - well, that and the screaming.

Both sports essentially aim for proximity to a distant target - the jack in bowls, the button or centre of the house in curling. Our Winter Olympic friends get a point for every stone they put in the house which is closer to the button than their rival's best stone.

But it's the sweeping that separates the two disciplines and is the difference between the serenity of bowls and the banshee-like racket of curling.

It's another one of those fascinating sports where the laws of physics play a big role in the end result, if harnessed by the sweepers. Brushing the ice makes it smoother thus decreasing the resistance as the stone travels towards the house. If they need the stone to go further than looks likely, they sweep as if new year was approaching fast. Conversely, if they want the stone to hold up, they hold back on the brooms and let the surface bring it to a stop naturally.

The stone's path also has a tendency to curve as it slows. Sweeping it's path therefore prolongs a straight path. By sweeping one side of its path, the stone will be influenced to move towards the smoother half of its path, in much the same way as a cricket ball swings when the shinier side travels through the air with less resistance that it's duller, unpolished side.

There's more to curling than slide and hope. Hear the screaming, live on ESPN