What was the most popular Olympic sport in America during the 2018 Winter Olympics?
Likely, your first two guesses would be snowboarding and skiing, the former being a highly popular sport with some veritable superstars leading Team USA and the latter featuring one of the most popular athletes in the world, Lindsey Vonn.
But according to Facebook, the most talked-about Olympic sport this winter during the PyeonngChang Games wasn’t either of those two. Instead, everyone was talking about curling.
Facebook says that the number one most talked about Olympic sport on its platform in the US was Curling, which beat out Figure Skating. pic.twitter.com/RlvnMazftt
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) February 26, 2018
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the men’s team won gold, or that an eight-year-old episode from The Simpsons resurfaced afterward due to the fact that the creators of the show actually predicted this monumental event.
It also didn’t hurt that one of the men on the United States team, Matt Hamilton, sported one heck of an amazing mustache. Or that he became best friends with Aaron Rodgers during the games.
Curling is a fun sport to watch, too. It’s almost the antitheses of most other Olympic sports in that you really don’t have to be in good shape to play it. Perhaps that also adds to the allure of watching and talking about it, as fans can actually relate somewhat to the competitors (well, most of the time, anyway).
There’s some more interesting news on the curling front leading up to the 2022 Winter Olympics, too. One of the most dominant pass rushers in NFL history is dedicating the next four years to the sport of curling in the hopes of helping Team USA win another gold in Beijing.
Needless to say, while other winter sports are going the way of the dodo bird, curling is coming on strong.