World Curling has backed down from their decision to make officiating stricter during the Winter Olympic Games. One day after publishing a statement in the aftermath of the heated Canada vs. Sweden match in which Sweden accused Canada of cheating, saying they would put two official monitoring deliveries, they published another statement on Sunday afternoon, undoing that decision.
"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. 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", said the World governing body in curling.
This means returning to the same method of officiating from before the controversy. In the time, less than a day, that World Curling placed two officials in deliveries, two curlers, Rachel Homan for Canada's women's team, and Bobby Lammie from Britain's men's team, had stones removed due to alleged violations, setting a new controversy as the curlers said they had not committed infractions.