Registered: Feb 2018
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Posts: 2

At the start of the 8th end in the USA vs China womens Olympics match, a Chinese player was allowed to rethrow a stone after she hogged it (for the second time in the match), after consulting with an official. Can anyone explain why? There was no commentary during the match.

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Registered: Sep 2011
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Posts: 1064

Yes,

It was the correct application of the procedure to appeal an electronically reported hogged stone.

Curling stones at the international level have electromagnetic sensors in them that detect when the stone crosses the hog line, and whether or not the athlete's hand is on the handle at that time. If the sensors detect the stone is still being grabbed at the time of the line crossing, red lights flash on the stone, and per rule, it must be IMMEDIATELY removed from play.

However, this technology is not perfect, and it does report false positives. As such, a team suffering this penalty can appeal to the umpire that they did not hog the stone and that it was a technical error from the sensor.

If that appeal happens, the stone is tested by the ice crew (essentially by running it over the hog line's magnetic strip), and if the ice crew confirms the error, then the stone is allowed to be redelivered.

That's what happened here. The red lights came on, the curler did not believe she hogged the stone, she appealed, and testing revealed she was correct, so she was allowed to rethrow.

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Registered: Aug 2015
Location: Baltimore, MD
Posts: 31

The Eye-on-the-Hog system malfunctioned. The officials tested the stone to confirm that the red lights came on erroneously, and that's when they allowed the re-throw.

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Registered: Feb 2018
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Posts: 2

Thanks. I didn't see a red light flashing on the stone. Since they went back to the near hog line to test it, that makes sense.
Both rocks she hogged in the match came to rest short of the far hog line. I thought she was complaining that there was something wrong with the stone.

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Registered: Apr 2016
Location: River Falls, WI, USA
Posts: 445

I didn't catch the earlier one. When the second one happened, I checked to see what stone it was, and noticed that it's from the same set of stones that gave the apparently false positive result to Eve Muirhead yesterday. Eve's was red, sheet B, stone 3, and this one was red, sheet B, stone 2.
The difference was that this time, the officials were able to replicate the error, even though again they tested it on the hog line they happened to be standing closest to rather than the one where the error took place.

I'd suggest any team playing with that set of stones for the rest of the tournament ask the officials to keep a close eye out for further malfunctions.

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Registered: Sep 2011
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Posts: 1064

There are *usually* spare handles which can be swapped out for problematic ones, in the middle of a game even (it takes like 2 minutes).

I'd be surprised if they didn't do that.

and JGard...the lights are *really* small, LED sized, they don't tend to show up on TV. but the sweepers and officials can see.

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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990

At the Brier in Calgary the lights signaled an infraction in a game where a hogline violation was called against a team playing against Kevin Koe. The replay on the jumbotron clearly showed.the.lights were.faulty and Koe.pushed the rock back down the sheet and let him rethrow, overruling the call on the sheet.

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