What to know about Olympic curling 'double touch' controversy
The Olympic curling rink has delivered some dramatic finishes and heated moments at the Milan Cortina Winter Games as several teams point fingers at each other over potential "double touch" infractions.
The typically calm and precise Olympic event has instead been full of outbursts and officiating debates in recent days, making the sport one of the most talked-about events of the Games.
Team USA has so far managed to avoid the imbroglio, with the women's crew pulling off a nail-biter victory over China on Sunday to win their third straight game and improve to 4-1, and the men's team notching a monumental 8-5 victory the same day over defending Olympic gold medalists Sweden.
However, the growing officiating controversy continues to sweep several other nations and matches.
The Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium, nestled in the center of the Dolomites, has become home to a widening dispute over double-touching, a rule violation that involves illegal contact with the stone after its release.
World Curling, the global governing body of the Olympic sport, explains the rule on its website, stating that a stone "must be clearly released from the hand before it reaches the hog line at the delivery end."
"If the player fails to do so, the stone is immediately removed from play by the delivering team," the rule states.
The Canadians were embroiled in the controversy twice over the weekend, with Sweden accusing the Canadian men's team of the violation on Friday night. (The Canadians were not formally charged with a violation but were given a verbal warning for using "foul or offensive language" during the match, stemming from the back and forth between the two teams following the Swedish team's accusation.)
The Canadian women's team had a stone removed the following day in their game against Switzerland, amid heightened umpire surveillance of matches.
Videos have circulated online that appear to show both Canadian players double-touching stones, but the teams have denied the rule violations.
As World Curling stated in a press release Saturday, "World Curling does not currently use video replay to re-umpire game decisions. Decisions made during a game are final."
Britain's men's team also had a stone removed on Sunday during the ninth end of a round-robin game against Germany. British curler and 2022 Beijing Games silver medalist Bobby Lammie was flagged after officials said he made contact with the stone post-release.
Britain went on to win the match 9-4, despite the infraction.
On Saturday, World Curling assigned two officials to rotate among the sheets -- the ice strip on which a curling match is played -- while acknowledging that it was "not possible" to station umpires at every hog line where legal release is determined.
On Sunday, the organization stated that it had updated its stone monitoring protocol "following a meeting with representatives of the competing National Olympic Committees."
"This change in protocol will see the two umpires who had previously been actively monitoring athlete deliveries remain available in the field of play, but will now only monitor athlete deliveries at the request of the competing teams," World Curling said in a press release. "The umpires when requested will monitor deliveries for a minimum of three ends."
The double-touch infraction has rarely been enforced this aggressively in past competitions. Curlers are divided on whether the implementation of video replay is a viable solution to the rising controversy.
Johanna Heldin, an alternate on the Swedish women's team, told The Associated Press that video reviews could potentially disrupt "the speed of play.
"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," she added.
U.S. curlers and sisters Tara Peterson and Tabitha Peterson, meanwhile, said they "absolutely" support the idea.
"There's instances where an instant replay would be huge," Tara Peterson told the AP.
