World Curling has issued a new statement after meeting with representatives of teams competing in the Winter Olympic Games.
The board has confirmed an update in 'the stone monitoring protocol' beginning with tonight's (15 February) evening session. This comes following a bit of carnage during recent matches with strong allegations of cheating.
On Friday, a bit of a row broke out as Sweden's Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian third Marc Kennedy of double touching the stone. And in response, the Team Canada athlete denied it as well as telling him to 'f**k off'.
The Canadian team were accused of cheating again yesterday during their loss to Switzerland and other games have seen infractions due to double touching.
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World Curling previously said it would have umpires observing the delivery for the rest of the Winter Olympic matches but this now seems to have changed.
And now it has given an update on how the umpiring will work going forward.
World Curling said: "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.
"The umpires when requested will monitor deliveries for a minimum of three ends."
So, basically, this mid-Olympic change decided with national Olympic committees tweaks the change World Curling had already made.
It previously said it would have two umpires actively monitoring deliveries across the four games taking place. And during this, two rocks got pulled.
But now, those two umpires will no longer be monitoring but instead just be available if the teams request it.
This all seems to have kicked off following Friday's chaos between Eriksson and Kennedy.
And for those who haven't also become a self-labelled curling expert, let's go over the rules on delivery.
"A double touch of the stone handle before the hog line at the delivery end is allowed," World Curling explains. "A re-touch of the stone handle after the hog line at the delivery end is not allowed and detected by the new handles.
"A stone must be delivered by using the handle of the stone. Touching the granite at any time during the forward motion is not allowed and considered a touched moving stone which results in the stone being removed from play."
Kennedy told reporters following his clash with the Swede: "I don’t like being accused of cheating, so I told him what I thought of it. It’s good for sport guys, it gets heated out there, it’s a battle, we’ve played each other a million times."
Well, I'm for one locked in, who'd have thought curling would have so much drama?
Topics: Winter Olympics, Sport
Jess Battison