TORONTO \u2014 Even though Monday marked a historic day for the future of curling with the debut of Rock League, the first-ever professional curling league, there was a bigger topic of conversation floating around the rinks at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.<\/p>\n
All the chatter was surrounding the double-touch controversy between Sweden\u2019s Team Niklas Edin and Canada\u2019s Team Brad Jacobs at the Olympics, which was reignited by a new video from Sweden this weekend.<\/p>\n
As first reported by the CBC\u2019s Verity Stevenson, Swedish media outlet SVT published a video during last week’s men’s world championship that showed Edin’s third Oskar Eriksson demonstrating the impact a double-touch can have on a rock. At the Olympics in February, Eriksson was the one who accused Jacobs’ third Marc Kennedy of a double-touch violation, setting a blaze of controversy through the Olympic tournament.<\/p>\n
Jacobs, who became the first skip to ever win two Olympic gold medals on the men\u2019s side, saw the video and didn\u2019t take too kindly to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just ridiculous that this is still going on and that they would put together a video like that… that\u2019s just ridiculous, in my opinion, that that occurred,\u201d Jacobs said Monday after his Shield Curling Club picked up the first win in Rock League history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that it\u2019s not something I\u2019m too happy about right now. I have nothing good to say about Oskar Eriksson or that entire team, or the Swedish curling federation right now, so I\u2019m not going to say anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the video, Eriksson is quoted as saying through translation that \u201cevil unfortunately wins sometimes,\u201d and that he believes his team was just doing the right thing by calling Kennedy out.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s quite clear and obvious what was happening,\u201d Eriksson said after coming off the ice for his first Rock League action with his team, Alpine Curling Club. \u201cBut I don\u2019t want to take away anything (Team Jacobs have) done in the past, like they’re a great team, they\u2019re great curlers, even if not touching the rock and they\u2019ve won a lot of events before the Olympics as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the latest video from Eriksson, the curling world seemed ready to move on from what happened at the Olympics. Now, though, Jacobs says something more needs to be done to put the situation to rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis whole thing is far from over, and that\u2019s very clear and I think Oskar and the Swedish television made that very clear just now,\u201d Jacobs said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, we’re going to try and work towards coming up with a good solution to all of this nonsense because that\u2019s exactly what it is and if you actually read the WCF rule book and you read the language properly, there was never any infractions of any kind, there was zero cheating at the Olympics and this is all just ridiculous. So, this needs to be fixed and we\u2019re gonna try to work together with the World Curling Federation to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n