Measuring equipment glitch has curlers upset
GANGNEUNG • There was significant controversy before the game even began and it carried on after but there was no way Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris were going to let it get into their heads during the contest.
Lawes and Morris i mproved their record to 4-1 at the Olympic mixed doubles curling tournament with a dominant 7- 2 win over the defending world champions from Switzerland.
The Canadians were precise throughout the game, which i s something that couldn’t be said about the equipment used to measure pre- game last- stone draws to the button. The draws are used to determine who gets hammer in the first end of the game.
The laser device being used on the Canada- Switzerland sheet malfunctioned, causing L awes, Morris, coach Jeff Stoughton and team leader Paul Webster to question the results.
T he l ast s t one draws (LSD), thrown by every player before each game are also counted cumulatively and can be used as tiebreakers in the event that several teams are tied for fourth place.
If three teams are tied, the one with the worst cumulative LSD score will be eliminated. The Canadians were speaking on behalf of all the teams in the field in their discussions with the officials.
“What’s unfortunate is LSD can potentially cause you to be eliminated so it’s vital that they get everything right,” Morris said. “That’s what we’re pushing for. All the results need to be valid and fair for every team.”
Having the hammer in the first end is a major advantage for teams in curling and the last stone draws before the game have become an integral part of the game.
There’s concern among the curlers that none of the results from the tournament, which started on Thursday, are valid.
“They’ve changed the process and with the new process you pretty much need a master’s degree in calculus to figure out some of these totals,” Morris said. “It’s prone to more error. They’re trying to get it so precise but at the same time it’s complicated and sometimes you get errors like this.”
The equipment malfunction was discovered after Morris threw his LSD, so the officials stopped players on all sheets from shooting. The second shooters had to wait more than five minutes and all of them had poor shots.
“They got frozen out,” Stoughton said.
“It’s not what we want to see just because of how important that LSD can be.”
After t he game, t here was little celebrating, as the Canadians stayed on the ice to try to hammer out the controversy. “They’re going to go back and re- verify because they have saved all the numbers and they’ ll re- do the calculations,” Stoughton said. “We want to make sure that they are right and we still don’t think that they are quite right.”