The controversy that began as a heated accusation during Friday’s men’s match between Canada and Sweden quickly spiraled into a full-blown debate in the sporting world. And as World Curling noticed the discord at the Milan Olympics, they immediately took action and introduced a major change.

As reported by CBC’s Devin Heroux on X, new measures will take immediate effect, as the statement read, “Following a meeting with representatives of the competing National Olympic Committees, an update in the stone monitoring protocol has been confirmed, beginning with the evening session on Sunday 15 February.”

World Curling added, “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.”

The current edition of the Winter Olympics was supposed to represent a technological leap in the sport. Indeed, the curling officiating was enhanced with electronic handles on stones automatically detecting hog line violations for the first time at the Games. However, there was a single issue.

The stone’s body, following the release, stays beyond the capability of current sensors to detect. So, human judgment is still required to make such calls, and the incident on Friday demonstrated it.

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So, it all began when Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian vice Marc Kennedy of touching his stone during delivery. The move came under the hog-line violation, and tensions boiled over when Kennedy told Eriksson to “f*** off,” which was audible from his lapel microphone. And World Curling immediately took notice of the turmoil and initially tried to defend the protocol.

“Officials spoke with both teams and set game umpires at the hogline to monitor deliveries for three ends, which is the official protocol following this type of complaint. There were no hog-line violations or retouches of the stone during the observation,” the organization said in a statement.

However, World Curling didn’t let the Canadian competitor walk away with this. They spoke to Canadian officials to issue a verbal warning regarding the language used during the game.

“During that meeting, it was made clear to those officials that further inappropriate behaviour, determined by rule R.19, would result in additional sanctions,” the statement read. The rule clearly states that any improper conduct, including foul or offensive language, equipment abuse, or wilful damage on the part of any team member, is strictly prohibited. And any violation will potentially lead to suspension of the alleged.

This entire incident got more heated in the post-match interviews, where many words were exchanged between the two teams.

Accusations and criticism came before World Curling’s official statement

“We want a game that is as sportsmanlike, honest and clean as possible, so we call it out as soon as I see that the Canadian No. 2 is, in my eyes, there poking the stone. He drops the handle, so it gets a green light and that’s OK, but you can’t then poke it in any other part than the electronic handle and, according to us, they did that,” said Oskar Eriksson, agreeing with many opinions that surfaced online against Team Canada.

Marc Kennedy’s response? “He’s still accusing us of cheating, and I didn’t like it. So I told him where to stick it because we’re the wrong team to do that to. So I don’t care. He might have been upset that he was losing. I have a ton of respect for Oskar Eriksson. He’s one of the best players to ever play. And I just told him, ‘I would never do that to you. I would never accuse you of cheating,’” he said.

To Kennedy’s defense, teammate Brad Jacobs stated, “(Eriksson) was a little bit unhappy about some things that were going on, and he was voicing that, and I think just acting, trying to act a little tough, and we’re not going to have it. If you think that we’re going to put up with anything from those guys or anybody period, you’re wrong. It’s just not going to happen.”

Whoever would’ve thought that one of the calmest sports in the entire world would see such a heated controversy? That’s the Olympic Games for you!