By Adam Laskaris
You can add the Canadian women's team to the sudden curling drama unfolding at the Winter Olympics.
On Saturday, Canadian skip Rachel Homan threw her first rock in the first end against Switzerland, in what usually would've been a pretty routine battle between the two top teams in the world.
But it was suddenly yanked off the ice by an off-ice official, who believed that Homan had touched the rock a second time after releasing it.
"I’ve never done it in my life,” Homan replied.
Homan fell 8-7 in an extra end after initially taking a 4-0 lead. Canada is now 1-3 at the Winter Olympics, with the country searching for their first medal in women's curling since Jennifer Jones' rink won gold in 2014.
“It’s frustrating, the officials getting into the game that they have no business getting into. It’s frustrating when there’s nothing to even look for,” Homan said postgame to CBC’s Bryan Mudryk.
“Obviously it rattles you and we fought hard and we lost in the extra by one point. It’s just a shame that this had to happen.”
Homan also spoke about her conversation with the official.
“They said I touched the stone after I let it go, which is so far from the truth it’s crazy. Just making something up, we have the maple leaf on our back, I’m not sure,” she added. “We had a great game, we fought tough, tried to stay together. We had a bad end and lost by one. We had a great game, we play like that, we’ll be in the mix in the end.”
Watching with a closer eye
Officials had been tasked by World Curling to watch hog lines more closely following a heated exchange on Friday with another Canadian rink.
In a men's game between Canada and Sweden, Canadian Marc Kennedy and Swede Oskar Eriksson went at each other throughout the contest, including a few expletives fired from Kennedy to Eriksson. Kennedy felt that the Swedes had accused him of cheating, comments he later called a "plan to catch teams in the act" with a violation of IOC filming guidelines.
Kennedy has since said he "could've handled it better", though overall didn't seem too cool with the accusation.
"I’m not going to apologise for defending my teammate and standing up for myself," he said Saturday.
Lead photo by Anil Mungal/TCG
