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.
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.t previously said it would have two umpires actively monitoring deliveries across the four games taking place. And during this, two rocks got pulled.