cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7671573

Sweden knew Canada’s Marc Kennedy was a notorious cheater.

So they set up a camera at the ‘hog line’ to record it.

And caught him doing it at the Olympics.

tweto

  • tomiant@piefed.social
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    9 hours ago

    A tiny finger poke makes a ton of difference apparently, which is precisely why it’s forbidden. You’ve got a 45 meter long track, small adjustments matter a lot. Though honestly I cannot believe I am letting myself getting worked up over fucking curling.

    I guess it’s just the reaction to people cheating at the highest competitive levels and then have the gall to be fucking abrasive assholes about it.

    • ValueSubtracted@startrek.website
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      9 hours ago

      Having curled myself, I can assure you it does not…and if it did make a difference, it would almost certainly be negative, since you’re giving up any semblance of control that you had on the actual throw. There’s not going to be some “precision poke” that magically steers it where it needs to go. But don’t take my word for it.

      Does it make any difference?

      “No. The double-touching that I’ve seen has been incidental contact, and that’s fingers brushing or hand brushing on a 40-pound piece of granite,” said Eugene Hritzuk, a Canadian curler based in Saskatoon who has been involved in competitive curling and coaching for more than 60 years.

      “What can fingers brushing against a 40-pound piece of granite do in any event? You need the palm on your hand against that stone to do anything.”

      Delivering a stone entails acute skills to slide on line and on pace, he said.

      Once sliding on target and at the right speed, releasing the stone and then touching it with any force would cause it to veer off its intended line and speed, Hritzuk said. “That would not be advantageous to good execution.”

      Canadian curling commentator John Cullen, who hosted the CBC podcast Broomgate: A Curling Scandal, said most top curlers will say that double-touching has no effect on the stone.

      As well, most top curlers will double-touch at times and don’t think it’s a foul, he said.

      “The idea that a top curler would let a rock go and then want to try to adjust it with their finger —it doesn’t seem like there’s any way you could get an advantage from that. It feels like it would be worse.”

      But as I said, the rules are the rules, and I don’t think it’s wrong to enforce them.

      • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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        6 hours ago

        What can fingers brushing against a 40-pound piece of granite do in any event?

        This is a fun little physics problem.

        The CoF of a curling stone on ice appears to be between .006 and .016 depending on fast its sliding.

        So with a CoF of .006 that 40lb chunk of granite has an effective weight of just four ounces relative to that same chunk of granite at a CoF of 1. With a CoF of .016 it’s relative weight is 9 ounces.

        So if the finger brush is in either the X or Y axis then basically anything more than what it takes to press a key on your keyboard will have an effect.

        Trying to stop the stone from rotating is a whole different matter because then you’re working against it’s stored inertia and that will be much much higher. No way to calculate that though unless you know it’s rate of spin.

        • healthetank@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          I appreciate you finding that article - interesting one.

          I’m very much amateur curler, and can’t see how that tiny touch would impact it, but maybe it does at that level of competition.

          Using a perfect shot to stop on the button with no spin, and energy= all kinetic (1/2mv2) =friction energy(F*deltaX), we get a release speed of 1.8m/s (with a .006 coefficient), and a 2.98m/s speed (with a 0.016 coefficient).

          Using the same equation, I go ahead and rerun the number, but adding a distance of 0.1m, a value I used as a good approximation of a reliable accuracy of an Olympic throw, and a time of 0.2s (the approximate time I estimated based on the video), which means a deltaX2 of 0.36m, or 0.596m.

          1/2mv2+fapplieddeltaX2 = ffrictiondeltaX Fapplied comes out to 0.326N to 0.526N which is a miniscule amount.

          That seems to indicate that a tiny touch DOES have the potential to make a significant difference. Some sources say 0.25 to 0.5N is required for a keyboard press, so its roughly on par with that

          But, how much of a difference does the sweeping make on stone speed? Its easy to say that tiny change can impact things, but how does it compare to, say, sweeping hard vs not sweeping?

          This study shows a sweeping change of 45+/-8mm. Thus a change of 25% on top of that is not insignificant.

          So the last question is, does it make sense for someone to train specifically by cheating this way rather than doing it right and just pushing off with a more accurate force? That’s likely going to be subjective, but seems difficult to me.

          Who knows, maybe this is a crutch and it is making a difference. Sounds like they need to stop doing it any case, whether a way they’ve trained or not. Or wear a camera showing they don’t touch the rock and just hover their finger behind it.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        7 hours ago

        Having curled myself,

        dude…people do this when they over-rotate the stone after letting go of the handle. It’s not about steering or momentum forward. a slight drag will reduce the rotation.

        There is no reason to be pointing a finger on release.

        • ValueSubtracted@startrek.website
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          7 hours ago

          I would love to see someone go to a curling rink and demonstrate this this is remotely possible.

          There is no reason to be pointing a finger on release.

          I completely agree. There is absolutely no reason to do it, because there is no chance it will do anything.

      • tomiant@piefed.social
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        9 hours ago

        It’s strange then how this is a common strategy among cheaters in curling, and that it is exactly what the Canadian team is known for, and it is illegal to do for precisely that reason.

        • deeferg@lemmy.ca
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          7 hours ago

          I’ve been watching the curling through these Olympics, and after this was done there were reports that other nations teams also have claimed to have done this before, and that they don’t think it requires extreme policing like the Swedish team suggested. The latter half of their argument led me to believe it happens a lot more than we knew before this incident and they’d rather this not become a constant issue. Sounds like the Swedish team has been trying to accuse the Canadian team of this for a few years now, and have gotten a reputation internationally about it as sore losers.

          So it’s only “what the Canadian team is known for” because of the swearing response, and the fact it was broadcast everywhere after Swedish media blew up about it, and why they only had umpires watching as of the next day. It seems like the rest of the world doesn’t care about this, and is more upset about the aggressive response (which I think everyone can agree with)

        • ValueSubtracted@startrek.website
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          9 hours ago

          this is a common strategy among cheaters in curling

          Very confidently stated, but I really don’t think it is.

          it is illegal to do for precisely that reason.

          It’s illegal because it’s way simpler to implement a “no touching” rule than to try to define game-changing and non game-changing touches in a way that would be enforceable.

          And again, I have absolutely no problem with the rule being enforced, even though I don’t think for a hot second that it impacted the game.