Getting your player ready...
Nowhere in Brazil’s more than 3 million mostly tropical square miles is there a facility devoted to curling. So when USA Curling, the sport’s American governing body, received an official challenge from Brazil last summer for the second Western Hemisphere berth at the 2009 men’s world championship, it came as a bit of a shocker. The best-of-five match against the U.S. team, which began Friday in Bismarck, N.D., will be Brazil’s international curling debut, an appearance about as unlikely as that of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics. The New York Times
