Scandals and accusations of cheating are nothing new to the Olympics. For decades there have been allegations of corrupt judges, doping, other drugs, abuse, and entire countries finding ways to cheat. But if there was one sport in the event line-up that we thought was relatively scandal free, it was curling. It looks like we were wrong.
Curling is where someone tosses a rock across the ice while people wipe the ice in front pathway with brooms. It’s actually a highly strategic and exacting sport where the slightest movement and variation in the ice can dramatically impact the way a stone is thrown and where it ends up. Even a slight touch can alter the trajectory, which is what a Canadian curler has been accused of doing.
Setting stereotypes aside about Canada being a wintry hellscape, the country has a strong winter sports tradition. It has a legitimate history of performing well in several winter games. Hockey is one of them but curling is another.
So what happened?
On Friday, Canada was up against one of their strongest rivals, the country of Sweden. During their contest, Swedish curler, Oskar Eriksson took to accusing Canadian competitor, Marc Kennedy. They pointed out an illegal move known as “double touching.” When a curler releases their grip from the handle of the stone, it ends their involvement with their shot. After that, it’s up to the sweepers to sweep the ice helping affect the speed and trajectory of the stone.
Directly after release, the lead (person throwing the stone) could subtly reach out and touch the stone with their finger. Even a small touch like this can help impact the stone’s trajectory. This “double touching” is illegal and is what Eriksson accused Kennedy of doing. Making matters more complicated is that curling does not use a replay system to account for fowls. Matches of this kind use human judges positioned at very points along the sheet of ice.
Kennedy did NOT react well to the accusations, letting of a stream of expletives that got him an admonishment from World Curling, the curling governing body. Kennedy believes that his Swedish opponents may be manufacturing these claims because they were beating the Swedes at the time. Analysis of videos taken from Friday seemed to show there may have indeed been some double touching. Deliberate or not is harder to prove, but its leading to a repositioning of judges for future events.
Want to make things even more complicated? On Saturday, the Canadians were accused again of double touching in their match against Switzerland. Then the Canadian women’s team was accused of doing the same. On the bright side, when you compare this scandal to like, Russian doping scandals, it’s not quite as bad. Then again we’re not curlers.
