BRITS IN VAR FURY ...AT CURLING
WINTER OLYMPICS SPECIAL
EVE MUIRHEAD was fuming after a controversial decision left her Olympic dreams hanging by a thread.
Muirhead had taken gold medal favourites Sweden to an extra end when a rare foul was called against the British skip. As she delivered Britain’s final crucial stone, the lights on the handle flashed to indicate she’d not released the stone before the red ‘hog line’ – curling’s equivalent of a no-ball. Muirhead protested her innocence but it was too late, with Sweden securing a 8-6 victory with a free shot. It’s a defeat that leaves her rink with three wins from six and no margin for error in their remaining three group games. “It is the first stone I think I have hogged in my life and I guess when it comes at a time like that it is horrible,” she said. “When something like that happens, it makes it very tough to take and it’s gutting it finished that way.
“But it just makes it worse when you see it and it doesn’t look like it is, but it does come down, I guess, to inches and millimetres.
“I guess when you see the replays and it looks like all the ones before it, it is hard to take.
“We did get the stone tested and the stone is fine so there is nothing we can do. We have to move on.”
However, Muirhead didn’t appear to have forgotten the issue and later broke her self-enforced Twitter ban to post a picture, which she believed showed her releasing the stone in time.
Tennis, rugby and even football have embraced video technology but despite scores of cameras covering every available angle at these Games, curling’s governing body won’t budge.
“The decision has been made and the players signed off on the score, let’s move on,” insisted British team head coach Anthony Zummack
“Personally, I think Eve double touched the stone but there’s no replay rule and speculation is pointless.
“I hear people talking about video replays but I don’t think it’s practical. Eve needs to focus on the rest of her games now.” Muirhead, a bronze medallist four years ago in Sochi, now faces matches against Switzerland, Japan and Canada and can afford only one more defeat to stand a chance of making the play-offs.
And, it seems, the genteel sport of curling is the place for controversy at these Games. A Russian medallist is suspected of having tested positive for a banned substance, in a potential major blow to Russia’s efforts to emerge from a drug-cheating scandal.
Alexander Krushelnitsky (left) won mixed doubles bronze with his wife Anastasia Bryzgalovoy but traces of Meldonium, the same drug used by tennis star Maria Sharapova, were found in his urine.
WATCH Eve take on Switzerland live on the Eurosport Player today at 11am. Don’t miss a moment of the Olympic Winter Games at Eurosport.co.uk and the Eurosport app