Curling is meant to be one of the Winter Olympics' 'nice' sports. An expert explains why

If someone ever asks: 'What sport would you compete in at the Winter Olympics?', nine times out of 10, people say curling.

To the uninitiated, the sight of athletes frantically sweeping the ice to glide a sliding stone is as baffling as it is hypnotic.

For most of the general public, the sport only enters the collective consciousness once every four years.

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It is known as an ultra-sedate discipline; polite, charming and defined by competitors regularly high-fiving and upholding the values of true sportsmanship.

What we don't expect to see is competitors yelling expletives at each other during a match.

But the explosion of repeated controversy and accusations has thrust curling into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Andrew Swain, Nine's Olympics curling commentator, and one fourth of Australia's 'Curlews' team, spoke exclusively to Wide World of Sports about the controversy gripping the sport.

What is actually happening?

In curling, the rules are deceptively simple: you're not allowed to touch the stone after it passes the 'hog line.'

Think of the hog line as an offside line, once it sails past, you are not allowed to use anything except for your brush to influence the stone's path.

Sounds simple, right?

But during the men's round robin game between Canada and Sweden on Saturday (AEDT), tensions boiled over as Swedish curler Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian third Marc Kennedy of 'double touching'.

This infraction sparked an uncharacteristic verbal altercation, where Kennedy told Eriksson to 'f--- off'.

The infraction was a vague, grey area of the sport where technically you are not allowed to touch the stone twice. But because Kennedy touched the granite of the stone, not the handle - the technology did not pick up the violation.

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"It's a very polite game, curling," Swain explained.

"It's a game that people - if you do something wrong - you're expected to own up to it right away.

"And on the other side of that, you wouldn't be called out for doing something wrong, if you know what I mean.

"Having been exposed to the competition here, whilst they're competitive and want to win, everyone's super friendly and offering advice to people who are new to the sport and really want to bring people in.

"You compare that to what we've just seen in Cortina, which is the highest level of competition.

"You can just see the pressure cooker building and building over there. And in one big moment, with the Canadians getting called out by the Swedish team."

Swain was the recipient of the 'Spirit of Curling' award at a recent national championship, which is handed down to someone at the tournament who is "being a good competitor, and being someone that plays by the rules, plays fair."

"One of the big things in curling, not just in Australia, but globally in the sport they talk about is the 'spirit of curling,'" Swain reiterated.

"Generally, (they) award a 'spirit of curling' award to people in a lot of tournaments around the world, it's a thing.

"I went down a bit of a rabbit hole around what that actually is. Essentially, it's about (not doing) anything to bring the game down."

But Canada are now not the only ones that have been burned by these accusations.

Their women's team had a stone removed from their match against Switzerland a day after their male counterparts had their controversial blow-up. Great Britain was then accused of the same infraction.

In the ninth end of Britain's round-robin game against Germany on Sunday (AEDT), officials said Scottish curler Bobby Lammie had touched a stone after releasing it down the ice.

Technology blunders

The controversy has ignited a debate around curling's lack of technology. Currently, curling does not use video replay technology to re-watch penalties.

Instead it relies on umpires on the side lines to catch any infractions, and anything they say, goes.

"Another interesting part of this whole discussion is the use of technology. We're living in a 2026 where technology is used in every sport to analyse different infractions," Swain added.

"Curling has never been a sport where that has been used. Probably the biggest bit of technology that has been used in recent times for curling is the red and green light on the stone itself, which basically tells you if you had a hog line infraction or not.

"There is no hog line infraction when there's a green light, when you let go of the handle of the stone. But for someone then touching the stone after that, the actual granite on the stone, that's not allowed.

"That's a burnt stone, but it doesn't show up with the technology.

"That does lend itself to accusations that they had planned this. Not that I'm going to accuse them of that, because I wouldn't do that, but it's not something that you'd regularly see in curling."

In the wake of these infractions, for Sunday's matches, 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.

The federation backpedalled on Monday morning, 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.

"I think it's a really interesting discussion for World Curling to now have around that technology and whether they do need to look into using some sort of technology, whether it shows up as a red light when you double-touch the stone," Swain said.

"There's a discussion to be had there, because every other sport has gone through some pain at some point when it comes to the use of technology.

"You look at soccer with VAR, and cricket with the snicko. Every sport has gone through this sort of pain."

Hearing every little word on the ice

A unique aspect of curling is that every competitor is mic'd up for the entirety of their games.

Each broadcast can hear every strategic whisper and grumble, but hearing a expletive-laden blowout between competitors was new vision to the sports world.

"One of the things that I've loved about international competition and watching the real pros go at it, is the fact that they're mic'd up the whole time, right?" Swain said.

"Because there's not many other sports that every competitor is mic'd up and you can hear every word that they say the whole time.

"And I'm sure that there are things mumbled under breath and stuff like that... generally (they) would be swearing when you throw a bad shot or whatever.

"For someone to actually direct that foul language at another competitor just doesn't happen in curling. So it's been really interesting.

"And then he (Kennedy) apologised. And that is probably in the spirit of curling. He apologised for his language.

"He's apologised... not directly to (the Swedish) team, but I think he apologised for bringing the sport into disrepute and to the junior curling team community that he is a role model to, for using that kind of language."