The controversy over whether some Canadian curlers during the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics have been guilty of “double-touching” the curling stone after its release has also raised a more significant issue.
Does it make any difference?
“No. The double-touching that I’ve seen has been incidental contact, and that’s fingers brushing or hand brushing on a 40-pound piece of granite,” said Eugene Hritzuk, a Canadian curler based in Saskatoon who has been involved in competitive curling and coaching for more than 60 years.
“What can fingers brushing against a 40-pound piece of granite do in any event? You need the palm on your hand against that stone to do anything.”
The controversy over the alleged double-touching first became an issue when, during a match at the Olympics on Friday, Swedish curler Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian curler Marc Kennedy of breaking the rules by touching the granite of the stone with his finger after he let go of the rock.
The next day, an umpire accused acclaimed Canadian skip Rachel Homan of the same infraction in Canada’s match against Switzerland. The umpire stopped play, and the stone was removed from the match.
Both Kennedy and Homan have denied any allegation that they cheated.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, officials said Scottish curler Bobby Lammie had touched a stone after releasing it down the ice.
Hritzuk, who has also been involved in research studies into the mechanics of curling, said the basic premise behind rules in any sport is to prevent someone from getting an unfair advantage.
But he suggested that cheating allegations involving double-touching against Canada are unfounded because brushing the stone, or altering it, after its release would actually cause a disadvantage.
Delivering a stone entails acute skills to slide on line and on pace, he said.
Once sliding on target and at the right speed, releasing the stone and then touching it with any force would cause it to veer off its intended line and speed, Hritzuk said. “That would not be advantageous to good execution.”
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Canadian curling commentator John Cullen, who hosted the CBC podcast Broomgate: A Curling Scandal, said most top curlers will say that double-touching has no effect on the stone.
As well, most top curlers will double-touch at times and don’t think it’s a foul, he said.
Top curlers have trained their whole lives to perfect their slide and their delivery. And when they’re sliding, it’s a slide they’ve done hundreds of thousands of times and worked on to make the shot as good as possible, Cullen said.
“The idea that a top curler would let a rock go and then want to try to adjust it with their finger —it doesn’t seem like there’s any way you could get an advantage from that. It feels like it would be worse.”
Canadian curlers face ‘double touch’ cheating allegations
The handles are very close to the rock, and there’s a separation of only five to 7.5 centimetres (two to three inches) between the handle and the rest of the stone, Cullen said, adding that means sometimes your hand gets caught or it drags back on the handle of the stone.
“No curler would have ever called that on another curler as a violation, because no top curler believes that that actually does anything,” he said.
Still, Cullen said, he’s not opposed to having double-touch rules in place and that ultimately, players have to safeguard against extreme examples, like someone pushing the stone after it’s been let go.
“On some level, you need this rule because you don’t want there to be some outlier where someone sees a grey area and starts to deliver the rock in a way that we’ve never seen before,” he said. “But was this rule intended to crack down on the type of deliveries that Marc and Rachel and Bobby were doing? No, I don’t think so.”
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Mike Harris, a Canadian curler and CBC commentator for the Olympics, said he’s never seen any curler called out for double-touching.
“I’ve seen the odd touch of the back of the stone and stuff. But no one ever really worries about it.”
He said his team usually took the view that if someone’s doing that after they let go of the rock, it’s probably not going to be a very good shot.
“If you let the rock go and you think you need to touch it after the fact, then, you know, that’s not … a good thing.”
The real question, Harris said, is what was the motivation for Sweden to call out Canada. “Why would they bring it up on this stage? I think a lot of people are asking the question.”
Cullen, however, said while Canada may have a target on its back at world championships because of its teams’ dominance, he doesn’t see the double-touch controversy as “everybody against Canada.”
Nor does he see it as Sweden looking to “bury Canada.”
“I think they just felt like Marc Kennedy in particular does this sort of motion often, and he happens to play for Canada,” Cullen said.
He said he thinks the Swedish team would have likely raised the issue with another country if it believed one of their top players was doing this all of the time — and Sweden was 0-2 and playing them in a third game, which was the case in Sweden’s match against Canada.
But Cullen did question why, if Sweden thought Kennedy had a history of double-touching, it hadn’t called it out before. “You are only bringing it up at the Olympics. Is there an ulterior motive there?” he said. “You lose this game to Canada, you’re 0 and 3, [which] probably means you’re going to be out of the event. Was this altruistic or was this [Sweden] trying to get Canada off their game?”
