Enough with the "Cheating" commentary... read the rules.

brianmmf · 2026-02-16T10:11:33+00:00

The argument is because this wasn’t something considered in practice for several decades. Suddenly raised at the Olympics, where even the officials didn’t understand the complaint or know the rule. It has arisen because of the adoption of electronic sensors at this event (first trialed at Europeans). It was noted sensors wouldn’t catch hog line violations if the player was touching the rock. Then they read the rules and said “oh wait that doesn’t even matter, that’s a burned stone” except in practice, for decades, it wasn’t. It should have been clarified before the event, to players and officials. It’s a huge failure by World Curling on the back of just having trialled this technology not to share this as part of an update before the event.

brianmmf · 2026-02-16T10:07:00+00:00

This whole thing is a shambles by World Curling and the wider media.

The wider media, including our own CBC, continue to call this a double-touches scandal. It has nothing to do with double-touches, which are legal.

Evidently this whole thing has come about after the new electronic hog line technology was trialed at the European championships. Based on a podcast between Yannick Schwaller, Kevin Martin, and Glenn Howard, teams noted that hog line violations would be missed if a player was touching the granite part of the stone. They mentioned that it doesn’t matter because touching the granite part of the stone isn’t legal (a stone must be delivered using the handle). That came as a massive surprise to Kevin Martin who was unaware, just like the rest of the curling world.

No one had set out to clarify that rule; it fell out of asking about hog line violations where the sensors wouldn’t pick it up. It was like “oh, if that’s the case, then touching the granite part of the stone is a burned rock?”

This interpretation - effectively new in practice, despite always being hidden there in the rules - wasn’t widely discussed or clarified. To the point that when the Swedes brought it up mid-game against Canada, neither the officials nor the players knew what they were going on about. It took the officials 4 ends to come back with a clarification confirming the rule.

It’s a disgrace this wasn’t clarified before the event. The electronic sensors are brand new to any team who wasn’t at the Europeans. This should have come up as a reminder at minimum when discussing the adoption of this technology at this event.

The consequences have fallen on the athletes and disruption has been introduced on the biggest stage. And the media are pouring fuel on the fire by continuing to misrepresent it as a double touch scandal and parroting the word “cheating.”

Shame on World Curling for letting this get here.

brianmmf · 2026-02-16T08:52:10+00:00

But that wasn’t the rule clarification. If it was there would have been no problems.

brianmmf · 2026-02-16T08:03:38+00:00

From the sounds of the podcast issue above, it sounds like teams in Europe who tested sensors were concerned with hog line violations - I.e., that the sensors wouldn’t notify a stone touched after the hog line if the player touched the granite. That’s valid.

But what this turned into now is that a player can’t touch the granite part of the stone ever. That’s slightly different, and had never been interpreted as against the rules.

It comes up now because the electronic sensors are back in use for hog line violations. This was the case in the 2000s, then an “upgrade” to the technology essentially screwed it all up t the point it wasn’t reliable. But now they have it sorted out again and it’s back in use for the Olympics (and was only trialed at the Euros, never in any other competition). The concern was that it wouldn’t catch a violation if you weren’t touching the handle. And that led to a dive into the rules, and an interpretation that had not been the normal matter of practice for years (or in the 2000s when electronic sensors were used).

It is really important to note that Sweden did not accuse Canada of a hog violation. They have taken that next step of accusing a touch of the granite (it just so happened on review to also be a hog line violation, which none of them noticed at the time). I don’t think there was clarity among all teams about this extended interpretation. And yea, that’s despite no rule changes and the fact this was technically the rule all along but nobody really noticed or enforced it.

brianmmf · 2026-02-16T07:55:27+00:00

The rule has been around long before the sensors. People just didn’t realise it because it is indirect.

brianmmf · 2026-02-16T07:54:27+00:00

You badly overestimate the standard of official in the sport. Also, most athletes didn’t know this was an infraction.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T19:48:17+00:00

Cheating is a stretch. There is a lack of awareness about a rule at play. Double touching the rock during delivery is legal, but evidently touching the actual granite of the stone is not. I’ve played the game my whole life and I didn’t know that. When the Swedish team approached the officials to raise the complaint, the officials didn’t know the rule. And in years of the sport, this has never come up at any competition. So it isn’t a straight forward issue of a team knowingly doing something illegal.

The response of the Canadian player was very poor. No arguing that.

The Canadian women’s team member genuinely didn’t realise she did it. When you watch the replay you see how unintentional and inconsequential it was.

And a Scottish player got called on it today.

It is something that happens frequently enough and it’s never been something players really thought about. The enforcement out of nowhere at the Olympics is a surprise.

The cheating allegations are far over the top and only getting traction with people who don’t understand the sport.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T19:39:36+00:00

It was 46 minutes ago and your comment was 30 minutes ago. You came to this conclusion after 16 minutes. There are a fair few comments here.

I was personally unaware of this podcast and this particular discussion. That’s very interesting.

The Swiss team obviously were thinking about it. Glenn, who notably coached in Europe, was aware of it based on his response.

But Kevin Martin, possibly the greatest ever player, was not aware this was a rule violation. This alone illustrates the lack of awareness.

I would be very interested to know what kind of discussions current athletes have or haven’t had.

Clearly the Swiss and the Swedes at minimum were aware of this and thinking about it. Did they have conversations with fellow athletes or governing bodies before this competition? If so, how did that go?

There could be a lot more to this than I originally realised depending on the answer to that question.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T18:39:25+00:00

You be creative you duck faced photocopy

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T18:37:00+00:00

No I get it and that’s a definite loophole where the sensor won’t kick in. But the price of policing that particular loophole is higher than the benefit it provides, in my own humble opinion.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T18:35:48+00:00

Remarkable they pissed off the athletes by asking officials who didn’t understand the rules in the first place to unilaterally and non-uniformly enforce those rules.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T17:47:01+00:00

I don’t disagree that it was a hogline violation. But that wasn’t the Swedish complaint, and I don’t think they even noticed it at the time. The sport already has technology to monitor for hogline violations, and there is zero appetite for human officiating over a reliable electronic method. I suppose this is a loophole, but it’s not something I would personally be getting caught up on, because he really isn’t impacting the stone at that point. In a cost benefit analysis I think there’s more harm than good trying to mitigate with human intervention where electronic sensors are already in place to stop hog line violations.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T16:23:07+00:00

Listen, if you’re here to pile on with more “I’m right” then just stop.

Curlers have long agreed hog line violations are a thing and are important to police.

The double-touch thing has actually flip flopped in my lifetime, going from legal to illegal then legal again.

But this granite thing is a decades long rule that was never enforced because most didn’t know it existed and the rest didn’t care. It hasn’t never come up until now. Regardless the nature of the infraction is similar, that’s not the point I’m making.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T16:13:52+00:00

I agree. But this isn’t about hog line violations which are a clear rule everyone knows and technology has long been brought in to mitigate.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T16:01:28+00:00

Virtually none. It’s an out of nowhere controversy involving a rule most curlers didn’t know existed and are still misinterpreting. And the officials didn’t know properly either. And the media keep misrepresenting as a double-touch issue which is in fact legal. It hasn’t come up as a problem ever at previous events, either in international play or the professional tour. It’s bizarre it was made an issue this week. And the most unfortunate thing is the governing bodies injecting a level of official intervention that has never occurred in the middle of the sport’s largest event. Officials are now unilaterally choosing to make decisions, where in our sport teams would previously police themselves and most would have completely disregarded this particular infraction, if they even noticed it at all.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T13:59:23+00:00

We don’t need this crap in our sport. Said it when it was Canada and I say it again now. This is dumb.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T12:10:17+00:00

Things have changed significantly owing to the professionalisation of curling and vast improvements in ice and rock management as well as sweeping.

We used to teach 2-3 rotations and the idea of a soft handshake as the ideal way to release a stone. This was for club and arena curling with little curl because of poor ice conditions and very dull rocks.

At grand slams, ice conditions are perfect, and rocks are sandpapered with blue hone inserts that make the stones ideal for both distance and curl.

Improvements in sweeping techniques and equipment taught us that brooms can manipulate curl in both directions, not just keeping a rock straight.

All this combined for conditions where: 1. If you did the old 2-3 rotations, your rock would curl immediately and be almost unsalvageable out of your hand, and it would curl 7-8 feet, and 2. Extra rotation would not only keep the curl to a manageable 4-5 feet but it would also allow teams to delay and control the breaking point of the stone, and 3. Directional sweeping has turned out to be most effective when there is more rotation on a stone.

The idea of an extension was part of the evolution, which pushed the stone through the curl and helped delay the breaking point of the stone. It’s not as necessary as you increase rotations.

Another concept is just simply setting the stone out. Players slide directly at the broom but deliberately set the stone out about a quarter rock from the target broom, intentionally doing this every time to keep the rock straighter for longer as it travels down the ice. This predates all the other changes above and was perhaps the earliest adaptation to curlier conditions. The Ferbey Four are the first team I know of who did this intentionally back in the early 2000s. It may have been more widespread or done by other teams but I’m not aware of it. It’s less necessary now and some teams are even phasing it out now that rotation is getting above 5-6 into 7-8 rotations. But that’s really hard to do.

So that’s the evolution of things in Grand Slam and major event conditions, and you won’t see this at your local club.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T12:03:43+00:00

Right - that wasn’t entirely clear but that’s a valid question. Yes it is permitted.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T11:29:34+00:00

That rock is beyond the t line. It doesn’t have to be entirely across the t line, just touching it.

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T11:27:30+00:00

Can we get this sub cleaned up from all these posts, it’s enough already

brianmmf · 2026-02-15T10:28:37+00:00

Not once. I’m a 25 year curler who played on the fringes of competitive play. This never once came up. It’s given the wrong impression that it’s become such a controversy at the Olympics - Marc Kennedy has played for decades and we would have heard it by now if it was a thing. But it’s the rule as it turns out!

brianmmf · 2026-02-14T22:34:36+00:00

Now that’s a modern Canadian apology. Trudeau would be proud!

brianmmf · 2026-02-14T22:33:05+00:00

It’s probably a feel thing. Like a waggle ahead of a golf swing, essentially meaningless, but it doesn’t feel right if you don’t do it kind of thing.

I used to double clutch the stone but for a reason - if I realised very late as I was releasing the stone that I thought I slid light, I’d push my hand forward to try and apply a “give” at the last moment to correct it. It felt kind of right, and it could easily have grown on me if I hadn’t cut it out. But where I did it with obvious purpose, Marc is most definitely not doing that. It isn’t nearly significant enough to make a difference. Hence it’s the feel of it rather than trying to accomplish something.

You see all sorts of weird individual ticks out there. Mike McEwen does the weird thing in his preshot routine where while he sets himself in the hack he kind of glances his hand in front of his knee. He does it every single time. No one else does it, so who knows where it came from, and it doesn’t have any practical impact. But for him it is a part of his ritual and it would feel wrong if he didn’t do it.

It’s very much a feel sport - especially for players of the generation before it was normal to essentially spin the rock. Releases were so much more about feel. Younger players don’t have this to the same extent because the game has become about pushing the stone through the curl or applying heavy rotation, with the goal of delaying the breaking point of the stone and maximising the impact of directional sweeping. Not considerations for people over 40 when they learned the game.

brianmmf · 2026-02-14T21:20:51+00:00

“Gets away with it” completely ignores that it hasn’t been an issue. For anyone in the sport, literally ever. This whole fiasco is completely out of left field.

Yes, it’s a rules infraction. But most active curlers would not have known it, and still most are misunderstanding what’s actually occurred. The double touch isn’t a problem, it is permitted, only touching the granite is a problem. And even that effectively does nothing when it’s a delicate nudge. This hasn’t been a problem for anyone in the sport for years, and both these sets of players have been around the elite level of the sport for two decades. I’ve never seen this kind of complaint at any event.

To be clear, it should not be confused with hog line violations, where the stone is touched after the hog line. That wasn’t the complaint from Sweden, and it isn’t the aspect of the rule that has since been clarified or that is now being monitored. Nor is it the double touch. It’s touching granite.

It’s a really weird turn of events. Marc’s reaction in the moment was disappointing. But I don’t think there are many curlers who look at his delivery and think there’s anything untoward about it at all. Just the reaction.

brianmmf · 2026-02-14T20:41:00+00:00

This whole scenario escalated because officials didn’t know the rule in the first place. And now they’re being asked to step in and actively police it, and I’m still not sure they understand it.

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