In a Winter Olympics which featured high-risk competition in Ski Jumping, artistic grace in Figure Skating, and highly anticipated Hockey match-ups, Curling could have easily been a background sport. And yet, the incessant time on television as well as its intriguingly niche nature gave it a bigger audience. At Milano Cortina, however, the spotlight fell on the event for another reason — the winning team being marred by accusations of cheating.
A round-robin match between the men’s teams of Canada and Sweden saw some tense moments, including a heated verbal argument about Canada’s Marc Kennedy potentially ‘double-touching’ the curling stone after the initial release. Double-touching happens when after a stone is delivered, there is a second touch on the handle of the stone past the hog line (the point by which the players must release their curling stone).
There are many layers of controversy to Kennedy’s double-touch, but perhaps one of the biggest scandals was how the incident was handled. Following outcry from the Swedes, World Curling clarified that it would require umpires to monitor the hog line for potential rule-breaking. Prior to the Canada-Sweden game, umpires had a different vantage point and could not see the hog line at the necessary angle — Canada’s Rachel Homan and Team GB’s Bobby Lammie both got a stone burned (removed from play) following the umpire’s closer monitoring.
However, this does not mean that Homan and Lammie were considered to be cheating. Instead, the rules by World Curling offer ambiguity on the double-touch rule, where it was never really called out due to it frequently happening by accident and not offering a great advantage. In Kennedy’s case, the controversy lied more with him touching the granite — a slightly separate rule. After heavy protestation by many teams, World Curling revoked their early decision to instate umpires by the hog line and reverted the sport back to being primarily self-officiating.
Nonetheless, the damage had been done, and a shadow of controversy followed the Canadians through the remainder of the event, ultimately beating Bruce Mouat’s Team GB 9-6 in the gold medal match. Their Olympic victory sparked widespread discourse on social media, ranging from Reddit threads discussing the legality of the rules to TikTok videos with edits of Kennedy’s finger-poking superimposed in other sports. Curling has certainly made an impact on mainstream media at Milano Cortina, and whether the attention is negative or positive, this scandal will long be a talking point of the Games.
Photo by Sreyus Guruvu on Unsplash.