Curling Chiefs Take Action After Cheating Allegations Rock Winter Olympics
World Curling have taken action following Saturday's controversy between Canada and Sweden.
Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Olympics
Nasir Jabbar
Topics: Olympics
World Curling have taken action following Canada's controversial victory over Sweden.
Chaos ensued at the Winter Olympics as Canada were accused by Sweden of cheating in their men's round robin fixture in Cortina.
Sweden accused their Canadian counterparts of double-touching before they had released one of their stones.
It started when a player from Team Sweden was caught on camera between the second and third ends alleging that Canada's players were double-touching the stones.
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Tensions boiled over in the latter stages of their clash as Canada's Marc Kennedy responded to the accusations by telling his rival to 'f**k off'.
Canada went onto win the clash 8-6 but it was marred by the furious incident, with World Curling issuing a statement.
It read: "Following the Friday evening session, World Curling spoke with the Canadian officials to issue a verbal warning regarding the language used by a Canadian men’s player during the game.
"During that meeting it was made clear to those officials that further inappropriate behaviour, determined by rule R.19, would result in additional sanctions."
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Kennedy spoke out after being accused of cheating, saying: "You can’t take it back. You learn from it and move on and try to get the focus back on the curling. But I’ll be honest with you guys: my whole life, when my integrity has been questioned, sometimes that’s the response I have."
Rules state players can retouch the handle when delivering a stone before the hog line but after it passes that mark, it is strictly forbidden. Players are not allowed to retouch the granite of the stone.
World Curling does not use video replays to re-umpire game decisions, so calls made during a match are final.
And they claim it is not possible to have umpires positioned to observe all hog lines for every stone delivery.
But, following Saturday's controversy, two officials will now move between all four sheets and observe deliveries to prevent what happened between Canada and Sweden.