Benjamin Bestgen: Eye on the Hog

Benjamin Bestgen

For those unfamiliar, curling is a sport played on ice, where two teams attempt to slide heavy 19kg granite stones towards a target of four concentric circles called “the house”. The innermost circle is “the button”. The team who manages to get a stone onto the button wins the round. Further points are awarded for any stone that’s within the house and closer to the button than competitors’ stones.

Curling is exceptionally popular in Canada and Scandinavia, but the sport originated in Scotland around the early 16th century. The international governing body of professional curling, World Curling, is headquartered in Perth. Most importantly, the only officially accepted curling stones for the Olympics since 2006 are produced by Kays of Scotland, from a type of granite only found on the island of Ailsa Craig.

What is double-touching?

Under the Rules of Curling, curlers must use the handle of the stone to move it and let go before any part of it crosses the “hog-line”, a demarcation line on the ice. Before the hog-line, players can touch the handle of the stone repeatedly, though, as World Curling clarified, not the granite. Should a player touch the stone or still be in contact with the handle at the hog-line, it’s called “double-touching”. Double-touching results in removal of the stone from play.

An electronic system called “Eye on the Hog” can detect double-touching of the handle at the hog-line, but not player contact with the granite. A subtle extra push against the granite could go undetected.

Cheating in sports

Did Canada cheat or was the double-touch accidental? Cheating is a serious accusation: akin to a crime, it requires both actus reus and mens rea, meaning the rule violation was deliberate for the purpose of gaining unfair advantage over competitors.

Cheating also implies moral failings such as dishonesty and lack of integrity. It is a form of dishonourable conduct. Hence athletes accused of cheating rarely react calmly when confronted (Mark Kennedy certainly didn’t).

Renowned sports lawyer Michael Beloff KC notes that cheating comes in degrees of severity and can overlap with criminal and civil law:

• Some cheating involves criminality, such as bribery and corruption, illegal substances, vandalism or intentionally harming competitors.
• Other forms are similar to a civil law breach. A professional cricketer tampering with a ball doesn’t break criminal law but violates express or implied rules against such conduct and likely his employment contract too. The behaviour may incur a penalty, such as paying a fine, being banned from play for a number of games or being dismissed from the club.
• Some behaviour is neither criminal nor civilly actionable, but a regulatory issue, meaning a breach of the rules of the sport. Typically, the umpires or professional governing bodies of the relevant sport deal with these matters.

Did Canada cheat?

Camera evidence showed that Mr Kennedy, despite his denials, indeed double-touched. Some observers believe that his body-language indicates intent, meaning he cheated. Others argue that proving intent is difficult and the Olympics a highly charged, emotive experience for athletes. He may have been so deeply “in the zone” that he didn’t consciously register the double-touch. Similar arguments were made for and against Canadian Women’s curler Rachel Homan, who was penalised by umpires for double-touching: her stone was removed from game, despite her protesting innocence.

Gamesmanship

Interestingly, however, instead of accepting the camera evidence, Kennedy went on the offensive: he accused Team Sweden of deliberately positioning camera teams at Canada’s hog-line and requesting extra umpire monitoring to rattle and distract Canada’s players.

Such requests, while technically lawful and within the reasonable options available to players, could be examples of gamesmanship.

Gamesmanship, humorously described by Stephen Potter in his book The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (or The Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating) (1947) is the use of questionable, but not prohibited tactics to gain an advantage over one’s competitors. Examples include

• behaviours which break the opponent’s flow or concentration,
• cause them to overthink, unduly relax, become nervous, or
• the making of intentional mistakes that delay the game, waste time or trigger a particular rule that might force other players into actions or positions that eliminate a previously held advantage.

Team Sweden shrugged this accusation off: Oskar Eriksson dryly stated that he believed Mr Kennedy hadn’t slept too well after seeing the video evidence of his double-touch, while Eriksson himself said he had “slept like a baby”.

Of course, babies are famous for sleeping two hours and then waking up crying because they are hungry, gassy or need a nappy change. Perhaps Mr Eriksson was also a little troubled over the undignified scenes.

Inspiring future athletes

The Spirit of Curling, as explained in the Rules of Curling, demands good sportsmanship, kindly feeling and honourable conduct. It also expressly states that true curlers play to win but never to humble their opponents. It discourages gamesmanship: curlers should prefer to lose a game instead of winning unfairly.

Perhaps the best lesson to draw is for both Canada’s and Sweden’s curling teams to remind themselves of the example they are setting for the next generation of athletes.

Benjamin Bestgen is a solicitor and notary public (qualified in Scotland). He holds a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and tutored in practical philosophy and jurisprudence at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main and the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of “Practical Jurisprudence — Attempts to make legal philosophy interesting” (2022).