MILAN — Cheating has been part of the Olympics since the ancient games, when violators were punished with fines, public flogging or lifetime bans.
The Milan-Cortina Games have hardly been an exception, although there have been no reports of public flogging.
These Olympics started with controversy when a report in the German newspaper Bild alleged ski jumpers were injecting hyaluronic acid into their penises in an effort to fly further. Then came a different kind of cheating when medal-winning Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid confessed to infidelity in a TV interview.
Both scandals drew attention even if most people already knew that all is not fair in love and soar.
But those paled in comparison to the outcry that erupted when some curlers — Canadian curlers — were accused of bending the rules. That was held up as a great breach of etiquette, instigating calls for additional officials and even video replay to a sport where competitors have traditionally called their own fouls.
“Curling has historically operated on a culture of trust and self-regulation,” said Heather Mair, a professor in the department of recreation and leisure studies at the University of Waterloo and an expert on the social aspects of curling. “At most levels, players call their own infractions. They compete against people they know well, often in relatively small circuits, and they see each other repeatedly over the course of a season.
“That relational fabric has long been part of the sport’s informal governance.”
But when the sport returned to Olympic competition in 1998 after a 74-year break, that began to change. Suddenly, national pride, medals and funding were at stake. And after the Milan-Cortina Games ends, a well-funded professional league, the Rock League, will launch with six teams, further accelerating the sport’s evolution from hobby to profession.
“The whole context of the Olympics is the story here,” Mair said.
“What we’re seeing in curling is this kind of dramatic, heart-wrenching conversation within the sport about cheating and honesty and all this kind of stuff. Did that happen before in this case with the ski jumping? Was there this heart-wrenching conversation about cheating?”
To review, the Canadian men’s and women’s teams were accused of double touching the stone during release. The rules state a player may retouch the handle as many times as they wish when delivering a stone — as long as they do so before the hog line, the thick stripe that marks the end of the release zone. Touching the handle after the hog line is not allowed.
So when did Canada’s Marc Kennedy and Rachel Homan last touch their stones?
During Canada’s win over Sweden on Friday, the Swedes taped Kennedy’s release and the video showed him touching the stone with his index finger after releasing the handle. Kennedy, who was mic-d up, responded to Sweden’s allegations by swearing, which is also a break from curling culture.
A day later, World Curling, the governing body for the sport, deployed additional officials to monitor the hog line, and Homan had a stone disqualified in Canada’s loss to Switzerland when it was determined she touched it twice.
“This feels like a new era of surveillance for the sport,” Mair said. “I just don’t know how else we manage it.”
Modern stones have hog-line sensors built into the handles, so they reliably detect late release of the handle. But they don’t detect a brief touch on the granite itself. And without an umpire watching closely — or without video evidence — that kind of infraction can be difficult to spot.
“Despicable,” Canadian men’s skip Brad Jacobs said of the additional scrutiny. “As Canadian curlers, we were targeted. And to go out and pull her rock like that, I think it was a tragedy.”
Canadian coach Paul Jacobs took a more nuanced approach, conceding there’s a problem but disagreeing with the solution.
“If you listen to what Sweden said, and I think they’re right, this has been a problem that they’ve tried to identify to our international federation. And it wasn’t acted on,” Jacobs said. “Now we’re trying to quickly fix things at an Olympics, and I think it’s the wrong thing to do.
“A double-touch stone, or whatever it is, none of these officials have ever gone through any of their courses. We have untrained people doing things they’ve never done before. And we’re not at some bonspiel in Saskatchewan just trying things out. We’re at the Olympics.”
For Mair, the lament is that the very public controversy playing out on that Olympic stage will force changes at the top level of the sport that will trickle down to the grassroots. And what will be lost when that happens will alter curling forever.
“Once they start messing around with this trust, I think we’re on a pretty sad path,” Mair said. “This feels so ugly. But the value of these Olympic medals are such that, I guess this stuff can be sacrificed.”
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