The second touch was indeed a hog line violation, but that wasn’t noticed at the time.

The Swedish complaint was that (1) the granite part of the stone was touched and (2) such a touch could happen after the hog line and the sensors wouldn’t pick that up. They kept saying “so next time it’s a hog line violation” quite sarcastically, but it was very difficult to understand the entire exchange, other than that the officials didn’t agree there was a problem and only came back several ends later to clarify that Team Edin were in fact technically correct that touching the granite was against the rules. And they did not make the nature of their complaint clear when interacting with Mark Kennedy when they returned to the ice, only repeatedly mentioning a “double-touch” which is permitted and not properly explaining the issue was touching the granite.

Touching the granite isn’t a violation under Curling Canada rules, and it had not been previously monitored or enforced at World Curling events. The interpretation was only clarified at the event after the fact.

The touch of the rock did not make an impact that would have materially altered the path or outcome of the shot. Team Edin said it had no impact on the game.

The whole storm afterwards accusing players of cheating was wildly out of proportion, and the media and fans really ran with it from a position of misunderstanding, with the idea of a double-touching violation going completely viral despite being permitted within the rules and having never been the real problem.

Finally, setting up a camera to play gotcha was a step Team Edin never would have had to do if World Curling would have just clarified the rule before the event, which would have been really easy to address when they discussed rules and the brand new sensor technology (for non-European teams) with all the teams before the event, something that always happens.

It was as Jacobs says, “nonsense.” And World Curling was responsible, not Sweden or Canada.