CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The curling controversy at the Winter Olympics widened Sunday as increased surveillance of the matches resulted in the removal of a stone thrown by the British men’s team for the same alleged violation that burned the Canadians two days in a row.
In the ninth end of Britain’s 9-4 round-robin win over Germany, officials said Scottish curler Bobby Lammie had touched a stone after releasing it down the ice. Such “double-touching” is against the rules.
Until Sunday, the allegations had been limited to Canadian curlers, who represent one of the world’s most fervent fan bases.
The controversy began Friday night with an allegation against the Canadian men by their Swedish opponents; a day later, a stone was removed from the Canadian women’s match against Switzerland. Videos circulating on social media appeared to show both Canadian curlers double-touching the rocks but both teams denied wrongdoing.
On Saturday, World Curling directed two umpires to move between the four matches during each round, monitoring play. That policy was in place when violations were called on Lammie and Canada’s Rachel Homan.
But the federation backpedaled Sunday, announcing that it would keep the two umpires who had been monitoring the games available at teams’ request but that they would not be sent to monitor games by default.
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Some curlers said the double-touching infraction had never been called out with this level of intensity in past competitions and that it can be difficult to tell if someone is guilty of it. World Curling does not use video replays for reviewing penalties during games.
Olympic curlers had varying opinions on whether umpires, like those in other sports, should begin using video replays to adjudicate disputes or verify calls.
“If they bring that in, I think it probably disrupts the speed of play,” said Johanna Heldin, the alternate for the Swedish women’s team. “We’ve always been a game that tries to play by the rules and have that high sportsmanship level, so hopefully we can figure that back out.”
U.S. women’s curlers had a different view. Tara Peterson said she would “absolutely” support video replay.
“There’s instances where an instant replay would be huge,” she said.
“I feel like there’s a lot of other sports that do it,” said her sister, skip Tabitha Peterson.
