- Mark Callan, chief ice technician, ensures Olympic curling ice remains optimal.
- Known as "the Icemaker," Callan uses a technique called pebbling to maintain ice quality.
- It comes as crowd size and arena conditions have challenged ice maintenance at the curling venue in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Behind the scenes at the Winter Games, there is a team of people that makes sure the ice is near-perfect for curling matches. KSL spoke with the man making sure it all goes smoothly.
They call him "the Icemaker," thanks to some recent social media fame.
Several factors impact the ice here in the curling arena, and Mark Callan keeps a close eye on all of them. For those targeted shots to go work — for the stones to behave as they're supposed to — the ice has to be just right.
"An ice technician is wearing many hats. They're being a weather person, they're being an environmental control and they're also having to prepare the ice surface," Callan said.
Callan is the chief ice technician for the Winter Olympics. He's also known to some as the Icemaker, thanks to a popular online video.
"What we're actually doing is sprinkling little droplets of water, which we call pebbles," Callan said of what he's doing in that viral clip.
That pebbling is important in helping the stones behave as they should.
"Because there's such small droplets of water when they touch the ice surface, which is around minus 5 (Celsius), they freeze instantly," Callan said.
A whole team helps prepare the sheets between matches. But then there are the factors outside of their control, exacerbated by this 70-year-old arena.
"(It is) a little bit of a challenge, because a lot of the doors the spectators use open directly to the outside," Callan said.
On top of that, the size of the crowds can add to the humidity.
"So, therefore we've tried to forecast; we speak to the organizers and find out how many tickets have been sold. And then we try to precondition the building between draws so that when people come in, the building comes back to where we want it to be," he said.
What they really don't want to see is frost.
"Frost can slow the stones down. It can also affect their path so that they don't curl evenly," Callan said.
If they do their job just right, no one notices, and that leaves the players and their abilities to better influence how things turn out.
This is Callan's first year as chief ice technician. It's his dream job. He previously served as a deputy chief in 2018 and 2022.
