{"id":474032,"date":"2026-02-17T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474032\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T15:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:20:08","slug":"olympic-curling-scandal-could-forever-alter-the-sports-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474032\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic curling scandal could forever alter the sport’s culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MILAN\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Cheating has been part of the Olympics<\/a> since the ancient games, when violators were punished with fines, public flogging or lifetime bans.<\/p>\n

The Milan-Cortina Games<\/a> have hardly been an exception, although there have been no reports of public flogging.<\/p>\n

These Olympics started with controversy when a report in the German newspaper Bild<\/a> alleged ski jumpers were injecting hyaluronic acid<\/a> into their penises in an effort to fly further. Then came a different kind of cheating when medal-winning Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid confessed to infidelity<\/a> in a TV interview.<\/p>\n

Both scandals drew attention even if most people already knew that all is not fair in love and soar.<\/p>\n

But those paled in comparison to the outcry that erupted when some curlers \u2014 Canadian curlers \u2014 were accused of bending the rules. That was held up as a great breach of etiquette, instigating calls for additional officials and even video reviews in a sport where competitors have traditionally called their own fouls.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurling has historically operated on a culture of trust and self-regulation,\u201d said Heather Mair, chair of recreation and leisure studies at the University of Waterloo and an expert on the social aspects of curling. \u201cAt most levels, players call their own infractions. They compete against people they know well, often in relatively small circuits, and they see each other repeatedly over the course of a season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat relational fabric has long been part of the sport\u2019s informal governance.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when the sport returned to Olympic competition in 1998 after a 74-year break, that began to change. Suddenly, national pride, medals and funding were at stake. And after the Milan-Cortina Games ends, a well-funded professional league, the Rock League<\/a>, will launch with six teams, further accelerating the sport\u2019s evolution from hobby to profession.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole context of the Olympics is the story here,\u201d Mair said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing in curling is this kind of dramatic, heart-wrenching conversation within the sport about cheating and honesty and all this kind of stuff. Did that happen before in this case with the ski jumping? Was there this heart-wrenching conversation about cheating?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Canada's <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s (from left) Brett Gallant, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert compete against the China at the Winter Olympics on Sunday.<\/p>\n

(David J. Phillip \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

To review, the Canadian men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams were accused of double touching the stone during release. The rules state a player may retouch the handle as many times as they wish when delivering a stone \u2014 as long as they do so before the hog line, the thick stripe that marks the end of the release zone. Touching the handle after the hog line is not allowed.<\/p>\n

So when did Canada\u2019s Marc Kennedy<\/a> and Rachel Homan<\/a> last touch their stones?<\/p>\n

During Canada\u2019s win over Sweden on Friday, the Swedes taped Kennedy\u2019s release and the video showed him touching the stone with his index finger after releasing the handle. Kennedy, who was mic-d up, responded to Sweden\u2019s allegations by swearing, which is also a break from curling culture.<\/p>\n

A day later, World Curling<\/a>, the governing body for the sport, deployed additional officials to monitor the hog line, and Homan had a stone disqualified in Canada\u2019s loss to Switzerland when it was determined she touched it twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis feels like a new era of surveillance for the sport,\u201d Mair said. \u201cI just don\u2019t know how else we manage it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modern stones have hog-line sensors built into the handles, so they reliably detect late release of the handle. But they don\u2019t detect a brief touch on the granite itself. And without an umpire watching closely \u2014 or without video evidence \u2014 that kind of infraction can be difficult to spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespicable,\u201d Canadian men\u2019s skip Brad Jacobs said of the additional scrutiny. \u201cAs Canadian curlers, we were targeted. And to go out and pull her rock like that, I think it was a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Canada's <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Rachel Homan competes against China at the Milan-Cortina Games on Monday.<\/p>\n

(Fatima Shbair \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Canadian coach Paul Webster took a more nuanced approach, conceding there\u2019s a problem but disagreeing with the solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you listen to what Sweden said, and I think they\u2019re right, this has been a problem that they\u2019ve tried to identify to our international federation. And it wasn\u2019t acted on,\u201d Webster said. \u201cNow we\u2019re trying to quickly fix things at an Olympics, and I think it\u2019s the wrong thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cA double-touch stone, or whatever it is, none of these officials have ever gone through any of their courses. We have untrained people doing things they\u2019ve never done before. And we\u2019re not at some bonspiel in Saskatchewan just trying things out. We\u2019re at the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Mair, the lament is that the very public controversy playing out on that Olympic stage will force changes at the top level of the sport that will trickle down to the grassroots. And what will be lost when that happens will alter curling forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce they start messing around with this trust, I think we\u2019re on a pretty sad path,\u201d Mair said. \u201cThis feels so ugly. But the value of these Olympic medals are such that, I guess this stuff can be sacrificed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Cheating has been part of the Olympics since the ancient games, when violators were punished with fines, public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[219769,103,690,217110,219768,92437,219767,219770,218412,1082,16674,17716,1079,99,65792,16798],"class_list":{"0":"post-474032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-additional-official","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-curling","12":"tag-different-kind","13":"tag-handle","14":"tag-heather-mair","15":"tag-hog-line","16":"tag-marc-kennedy","17":"tag-olympics","18":"tag-release","19":"tag-scandal","20":"tag-sport","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-stone","23":"tag-trust"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}