By JULIA FRANKEL
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — The curling drama on the Winter Olympics despatched the game’s governing physique scrambling to handle a growing controversy and curb conflicting accounts of rule-breaking. The backpedaling got here lower than 24 hours later.
A day after World Curling ramped up monitoring of the matches, it pulled the plug, saying umpires would retreat and be out there on request however not by default.
The transfer got here after a fast assembly between nationwide curling federations and World Curling on Sunday during which curlers expressed dissatisfaction with the elevated surveillance. Athletes wished much less monitoring, no more.
Why would Olympic curlers, taking part in a sport the place mere centimeters could make the distinction between a profitable and shedding stone, select to ship the umps away? The reply might should do with the longstanding spirit of the sport, which some athletes are clinging to even because it grows more popular — and professional.
“I believe there’s quite a lot of pleasure in making an attempt to be a sport that form of officiates ourselves slightly bit, so to talk,” stated Nolan Thiessen, CEO of Curling Canada, whose groups have been on the coronary heart of the uproar over the previous a number of days. “I believe it was simply everyone taking a deep breath and going, OK, let’s simply end this Olympics the best way we all know our sport is to be performed.”
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Switzerland’s Alina Paetz in motion throughout the ladies’s curling spherical robin session in opposition to Sweden on the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. (AP Picture/Fatima Shbair)
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Switzerland’s Alina Paetz in motion throughout the ladies’s curling spherical robin session in opposition to Sweden on the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. (AP Picture/Fatima Shbair)
World Curling rethinks officiating
The saga started Friday, when Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian Marc Kennedy of breaking the foundations by touching the rock once more after initially releasing it down the sheet of ice. Kennedy’s expletive-laden outburst drew widespread consideration, as did the sport, which tends to fall off the radar outdoors the Olympics.
World Curling determined it wanted to double down on sport surveillance, despite the fact that it was already halfway by way of the Olympic males’s and ladies’s round-robin competitors.
From then on, the federation stated, two umpires would step out from behind the courtside desk and watch the “hog line” — the purpose at which curlers should launch the granite stone down the sheet of ice — from shut proximity. That manner, they’d be capable to extra intently verify for unlawful double-touches.
In only a day, officers known as two double-touch infractions, by Rachel Homan of Canada and Bobby Lammie of Britain, eradicating their stones from play.
It’s uncommon for stones to be faraway from competitors so ceaselessly.
By Sunday afternoon, gamers and coaches have been fed up, and World Curling modified its coverage after the assembly.
“When the gamers began complaining, it places them in a tricky place as a result of they need to do their jobs and hearken to the gamers that assume that there’s an issue on the market,” stated Emma Miskew of Canada. “I’m pleased with how the dialogue went and what the ruling got here to.”
Olympic curlers say the double-touch is just not a giant deal
A number of Olympic curlers stated that double-touching didn’t essentially reveal a nefarious need to cheat, and that penalizing a fast and unintended graze of the granite could possibly be excessive.
“In case you get a hog line violation, it’s not dishonest,” Homan stated Monday.
Miskew added that it was uncommon to listen to the accusation, at the very least in ladies’s curling, whereas Alina Paetz of Switzerland agreed with Homan that it’s a minor infraction.
“In case you do it, it’s not allowed, however I believe they blew it up slightly bit, so it’s an even bigger factor than it really is,” Paetz stated. “It’s the Olympics, there’s emotion in it. I don’t assume it’s really that huge of a deal.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
