IT professional and chosen as the best Finnish curling player of 2023 Markus Sipilä and Senior Constable Lotta Immonen are training purposefully in order to get a place in the mixed doubles competition at the Milan Winter Olympics in 2026.
On Sunday, February 18, Sipilä’s working day has started at 9 o’clock in the morning, so that the important joint training at 12-2 p.m. would be possible.
Sipilä has spent three hours preparing the training track of Lohja’s Kisakallio ice rink to optimal condition.
– In curling, it is important that the players also know how to make ice. Now, very high-quality help has been available for that, Sipilä states, referring to the event that will be running until February 24 behind the partition separating the training rink and the ice hockey rink: the World Youth Championships.
Finland is organizing the games for the first time during their tradition that started in 1968. Players under the age of 21 can participate in the World Youth Championship. The competitions require the work of up to 250 people from the organizers for various roles, so the effort is massive for a small sport.
Sipilä and Immonen thank one of these people in particular. Ice champion of the World Championships Ivan Moglia has also spared no effort to help a Finnish couple on the training track, even though the working farm that employs the Italian maniacally is located on the side of the racetracks during the World Cup season.
Familiar from James Bond
– A great talent, Sipilä says of the Italian, who in 2026 will be part of the three-person ice master group of the curling tournament at the Winter Olympics in Milan. The tournament will still be played in Moglia’s hometown, Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The city’s hall, which is being renovated to Olympic condition, is familiar to many Finns from the James Bond film Top Secret (1981), in which 007 plays Roger Moore feels hard in the arena rink.
Before getting into Ivan Moglia’s professional secrets, Immonen and Sipilä want to demonstrate to Urheilu what kind of work that requires precision and perfectionism is all about – and above all, how little is required so that everything is ruined in an instant.
– It is quite descriptive that the blades of the tool of the first stage of ice production, i.e. the ice pick, are sharpened in Holland with a precision where the tolerance is 10 micrometers, i.e. 0.01 millimeters . Ivan has still set the blades here in Kisakallio, Sipilä states.
Lotta Immonen throws a stone, whose target stopping point is located as close to the center of the goal circle, i.e. the nipple, as possible. Sipilä guides the stone by brushing it, still flawless, leaving very close to the goal.
For the second throw, Sipilä places an indistinguishable “garbage†on the sliding surface of the stone, which in no other ice sport would cause problems for the movement of the game equipment or the athlete. Immonen sets the stone in motion in exactly the same way as the previous one, but this time it stops in a completely different place than it was supposed to.
– I brushed the whole way, and the difference still came with the metric trade, says Sipilä.
A few hairs change everything
Next, the top sports coordinator of the Curling Association Jaana Laurikka removes a few of his hair with his fingers, of which Sipilä places a couple of pieces on the track. He directs the stone that Immonen removed to the hair, after which the game device behaves completely unpredictably.
– The orientation and clocked source data of each throw were practically identical. That is, three exactly the same throws and such results. This demonstration probably showed the importance of ice in this sport, Laurikka laughs.
– Because of this, you only walk on the ice in curling shoes, and shoes, brushes and stones are checked before the game. Ice may be brushed in front of the stone just in case there is some tiny impurity, such as hair, Immonen explains.
If the throw goes to one of the aforementioned reasons, it will not be repeated.
– It’s even worse if it happens at the time of deciding a crucial Olympic qualification, says Immonen.
One of the curling shoes has a Teflon sole, i.e. a very slippery material, and the other has a typically braking raw rubber.
Many days of tubing
Immonen and Sipilä get a break from training again; Laurikka guides her guests to get to know the ice-making side of the competition arena. There is a break between matches and the work of the ice team is in full swing.
Before the ice hockey rink of the Kisakallio sports college is a pitch-white surface suitable for curling, it of course requires millimeter-accurate track and goal area markings, but above all, a lot of work. Hockey ice is hosed down for many days, so to speak, so that it becomes completely flat and does not lead in any direction.
The ice consumed by the matches is first processed with the blade of an ice pick. The Canadian hand-operated device includes an auxiliary motor that makes the work easier. When all loose ice and snow is removed from the ice after this treatment, only the fascinating work phase begins, which makes this ice specifically curlingj I don’t.
Like billiards on the lawn
– It is called peblaus, i.e. dripping. Ice is dripped manually, after which the drops freeze. Without dripping, the stone would not slide, and it would behave completely uncontrollably. The spiral throws characteristic of the sport and the so-called climbs they generate would be impossible. It would be a little like playing billiards on the grass, Laurikka compares.
The expressions of Ivan Moglia and this Danish assistant are 100% focused as the gentlemen focus on their most important work phase.
The men advance back to front with water containers on their backs and nozzles in their hands along the drip tracks in both directions, exactly along the center line of the tracks.
The wrist movement that directs the dripping is completely secondary; the sight is downright hypnotic as the curling kangaroo glides along the ice surface.
The water contained in the tanks is specially treated.
– It is ionized, i.e. completely pure water, just like battery water. Another way to treat water is the so-called reverse osmosis method, says a resident of the Kanka Peninsula, who is part of Moglia’s group. Mika OllikainenFinland’s most experienced curling ice maker.
In Kisakallio, this element is especially emphasized, because the bedrock in the Lohja area is known to be of limestone origin. It is the lime that needs to be thoroughly removed from the drip water.
During the pebla, which requires concentration, Moglia’s face is like a stone carved, but it melts into a friendly smile in an interview with Urheilu.
– Making curling ice is as much art as science. We have to control countless things in order to achieve the best result, says the former competitive player, whose quarter-century-long career as an ice guru culminates in the 2026 Olympic tournament in his hometown.
– I am infinitely proud. The players’ level of demand for the quality of the ice is extremely high in the Olympic Games.
Sensors all around
On the table in the dressing room used by Moglia’s band, there is a laptop with several sets of numbers on the screen.
– The competition arena is equipped with many sensors, with which we monitor, for example, the humidity and air pressure in the hall as well as the temperature of the ice. When it was humid, hot and rainy outside, it caused us a big challenge. When the outside temperature dropped to freezing, and the low pressure changed to high pressure, the situation immediately eased.
The frost that settles on the surface of the ice is the ice master’s enemies. The phenomenon must be able to be prevented.
Moglia became an ice champion at the urging of his Swiss coach during his competitive career, and the work of the World Curling Federation has been enough.
– There were no separate music producers in Italy at that time. My coach was an ice master, and he urged me to focus on it. I have been on that road since 2000.
When the ice guru’s hometown Cortina hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956, curling was not part of the competition program, where it has been permanently since 1998. The most famous curling picture of the competition city is from the 1960s, Moglia says.
– Brigitte Bardot (French actress) was filmed then Playing curling in Cortina, Moglia laughs.
The boom faded
Markku Uusipaavalniemen the silver team he captained became a phenomenon of its time at the 2006 Turin Olympic Games and ignited the short-lived Finnish curling boom.
10 girls’ and 10 boys’ teams play in Kisakallio for the youth world championships. All the other Nordic countries except Finland and Iceland are participating, even if the host country gets quota places for its own value competitions.
– There are some juniors, but the World Cup level is still too hard for them, says Laurikka, the top sports coordinator of the association that is applying for the 2025 European Championships in Tampere’s Hakametsä.
Major curling countries include Canada, Sweden, USA, Scotland (Britain in the Olympics), China and Italy.
In Finland, the sports centers are Hyvinkää, Joensuu, Turku and, somewhat surprisingly, Eckerö in Åland. Hyvinkää is getting a new private hall.
Uusipaavalniemi operates a high-quality curling hall in Oulunkylä, Helsinki, but the Curlingliitto does not currently do with the management company cooperation.