That's a lot of sweeping: Canadian curlers set world record with 105-hour game

The numbers are staggering: 392 ends of curling, 6,272 stones thrown, a final score of 450-237, and most importantly, one world record.

A group of 10 Ontario curlers have just received word that their game that lasted 105 hours, 6 minutes and 51 seconds — spanning from the end of September into October — has set a new Guinness World Record.

Brittany Pearce was on the ice for most of the gruelling adventure and was ecstatic and relieved to find out their game broke the previous record of 100 hours. Pearce says they received confirmation from Guinness on Friday.

"Thank goodness it's finally over," she said. "It's been a year since we did the record. It's finally nice to have that recognition."

Brittany's dad, Bill, organized the event at the Coldwater and District Curling Club last September after finding out that a group of 10 curlers in Switzerland had broken their previous record.

Third time's a charm

That's right, this wasn't the first time this core group of Canadian curlers set the record for the longest game. In fact, it was the third time Brittany and Bill had been on the ice attempting to set the record.

"I think the first time we did it, the record was sitting at 54 hours or something like that. So we ended up doing 60 hours but didn't get Guinness recognition at that point," Brittany said.

"Then in October 2014 the record was around 72 hours in Scotland so we beat them and we did 79 hours. And then a group in Switzerland beat us with 100 hours. So we went 105."

The rules stated that only 10 curlers could partake in the curling odyssey — every hour curlers could take a five minute break. But these Ontario curlers played for two consecutive hours before taking a ten minute break while rotating through the lineup.

They would bounce from sheet to sheet to allow ice makers the chance to re-pebble the ice as they game rolled on.

"Every two hours we rotated a new player in. It was about nine hours once the breaks were included and then you'd get two hours off to do whatever you needed to do," Brittany said.

Brittany says there were many times throughout they felt like giving up.

"There were several moments we wanted to quit. The first low hit us at 18 hours. And a lot of the early mornings were hard and there's nobody and just us. It's hard. But we worked hard to pull each other through."

Raising money for charity

Perhaps the biggest motivating factor keeping the curlers going was that they were raising funds for a local charity called Radio For Cardiology, an initiative to bring cardiac care closer to the Simcoe County and Muskoka area of Ontario.

Over the 105 hours the group raised more than $4,000.

"I feel like it's mind over matter at one point. Each time we've done it we've raised money for a charity. I think that was a huge motivating factor. At the end of the day it wasn't about us it was all about raising money for the community," Brittany said.

Brittany says they had a large group of supporters throughout including family and friends who made it easy to keep curling when they wanted to stop.

"It was nice to always see a familiar face behind the glass. At some points you kind of felt alone so seeing their faces was nice," she said.

As for this latest record, Brittany says she doesn't see it broken anytime soon.

"We're pretty confident nobody is going to go after it. We've already said we're probably never going to do it again but you never know," Brittany said.