Curling is often called chess or bowls on ice; a genteel, slow-paced and respectable sport of strategy and precision that stands in sharp contrast to the more extreme edges of the Winter Olympics.
Until last week that is, when the sport was rocked not just with a cheating scandal, but a stream of F-bombs, accusations of secret filming, claim and counterclaim as well as a whole heap of bad feeling.
There is tension now in the air at the Cortina Curling Club, where the men’s and women’s Olympic tournament continues daily until Sunday, with extra officials and heightened sensitivities.
The situation erupted during the round-robin match on Friday between Canada and Sweden.
The Canadians had made a perfect start to the tournament but the Swedes were evidently suspicious about the delivery of the stone by Canada vice-skip Marc Kennedy. Oskar Eriksson, his opposite number, suggested he had been guilty of “double touching”, an infraction that could either mean touching the handle following the delivery cut-off point known as the “hog line” or actually touching the base of the stone after releasing the handle. Both would be an infringement punished with removing the stone.
Kennedy erupted in anger at the suggestion, aggressively telling the Swede to “f*** off”. A bemused Eriksson said he would show him what he was talking about after the match. Following a complaint by the Swedes, officials specially watched the next three ends and found no violations.
World Curling, however, does not use video replays to retrospectively review previous incidents. Crucially, their officials had been positioned head on to the delivery at the end of each sheet of site; one of the worst vantage points for spotting such foul play.
Canada won the match 8-6 and, while Kennedy’s foul-mouthed tirade attracted attention, the story really then went global when a side-on video emerged of the Canadian’s delivery.
From this angle, Kennedy did not appear to cross the hog line but did seem to extend his finger and gently touch the stone after releasing the handle – something that would be against the rules. World Curling reacted following the release of the video, issuing a statement in which it stressed that it was illegal to touch the actual stone (rather than handle) following its release. Crucially, it also introduced two additional officials to move between matches on Saturday and Sunday to specifically observe delivery of the stones.
Kennedy, who was given an official warning for the swearing, maintained his innocence and claimed that the Swedes had deliberately set him up. “When my integrity has been questioned, sometimes that’s the response I have,” he said.
“They [Sweden] have come up with a plan here at the Olympics, as far as I know, to catch teams in the act at the hog line. It was kind of evident that something was going on, and they were trying to catch us in an act.”
Nolan Thiessen, Curling Canada CEO, said that there had been a video taken on the hog line outside of the official Olympic Broadcasting Services. The Swedes said that the footage was simply taken by the Swedish public broadcaster (SVT) while Eriksson clearly felt his point had been successfully made. “I don’t think [Kennedy] has slept too well, while I slept like a baby,” he said.
With additional officials now carefully watching for potential infringements at the hog line, other teams have been implicated, including the Canadian women. Rachel Homan had her stone removed during Canada’s encounter against Switzerland on Saturday, after an official ruled that she had touched it again after releasing the handle.
Homan denied the foul, saying there was “zero-per cent chance” that she had committed an infringement. “I don’t understand the call,” she said. “I’ll never understand it. We’ve never done that. It has nothing to do with us.”
Emma Miskew, Homan’s teammate, also protested, calling for the referees to review the call via a video replay, but World Curling rules state that the official’s final call stands.
A statement by Curling Canada said: “We want to reaffirm that Curling Canada fully supports fair play, respect and sportsmanship, values that are fundamental to our sport.”
Increased surveillance of the matches also resulted in the removal of a stone released by the British men’s team for the same alleged violation. In the ninth end of Britain’s 9-4 round-robin win over Germany, officials ruled that Scottish curler Bobby Lammie had touched a stone after releasing it down the ice.
Bruce Mouat, Team GB skip, did not appear to protest the decision, with his team currently on course to qualify for Thursday’s semi-finals alongside Kennedy’s Canada.
“I think we’re starting off games really strong, which is such an important thing for us,” Mouat said. “Getting the two points early in the game to then give us that lead is what’s worked really well for us at the start of the games.”
World Curling is intending to soften its surveillance from Monday, announcing that it would keep the two umpires who had been monitoring the games available only at a teams’ request.
It has all caused a wider debate about whether rules were previously being properly enforced and if a form of video replay technology (VAR) should be introduced to retrospectively review incidents. Such a move would end more than a century of tradition in one of the Winter Olympics’ founding sports.
Many curlers believe that the double-touching infraction is something that has simply never been scrutinised with such intensity before and have questioned how much advantage is actually being gained.
There are mixed views on the sort of video replays that are common in other sports. “If they bring that in, I think it probably disrupts the speed of play,” Johanna Heldin, the Swedish curler, said. “We’ve always been a game that tries to play by the rules and have that high sportsmanship level, so hopefully we can figure that back out.”
American sisters Tara and Tabitha Peterson, however, are in full support. “There’s instances where an instant replay would be huge,” Tara said.
Tabitha added: “There’s already a lot of other sports that do it.” That debate will rumble far beyond Milan-Cortina, leaving curlers facing unprecedented scrutiny as the marathon battle for Olympic medals enters its final week.