FOLLOW ALONG HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES FROM TODAY AT THE 2026 MILAN CORTINA OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES.

A curling kerfuffle brewed on Friday when Sweden's men’s curling team accused Canada's Marc Kennedy of breaking rules when it comes to how he was throwing the rock down the ice.

Angry words were exchanged during the match, and since then, World Curling has released a statement reiterating the rules. But what are those rules? And what are the Canadians being accused of?

Double-touching in curling isn’t exactly what it sounds like.

A legal throw is one where the curler takes off from the starting block — called the hack — and slides down the ice, releasing the stone before crossing the hog line, which is the green line about 30 feet down.

A thrower can touch the handle of the stone as many times as they’d like before passing that hog line. But, if they touch it past the hog line — either by releasing it too late or by touching it after it’s been released — it’s considered a double-touch.

There are devices in the handle that detect if that violation has been made, and the rock will blink red if it’s an illegal throw.

While some have said Kennedy was accused of double-touching, that’s not the case. During the broadcast, Sweden skip Niklas Edin was heard saying to an official, "Can you touch the granite at any point though during delivery? You're not touching the handle, you're touching the granite."

The videos circulating online don’t show Kennedy double-touching the handle past the hog line, but rather he touched the bottom granite part of the stone, which is not allowed at any point in during a throw.

“During forward motion, touching the granite of the stone is not allowed,” World Curling said in a statement on Saturday. "As per rule R.5 (d) 'The curling stone must be delivered using the handle of the stone.'"

Any of those violations result in the stone being removed from play for that end. 

Rachel Homan, the skip of the Canadian women’s team, was called by umpires for the same infraction on her first throw of Friday’s loss to Switzerland, and video replay on the NBC broadcast appeared to show Homan grazing the granite with her finger upon release.

It was a violation the three-time Olympian vehemently denied.

"My hand did not move when I released it," Homan told Reuters after the match. "I have no idea what she saw. If she saw something, then look at the video. Go watch it a thousand times. You're going to see nothing. It's frustrating. It's not even a thing.

"If there is something, you call it out and the ump comes out, watches so it doesn't happen again. It's never been called out in the women's game. It's just insane."

It’s not just the Canadians. Great Britain’s Bobby Lammie was called for a granite touch during his team’s match against Germany on Sunday morning.

Rules violations in regards to illegal throws and burned rocks — which is when you touch the rock either with your body or your broom while coming down the ice — actually happen quite often. Typically, players police themselves and take the rock off the ice when they know they’ve burned it.

The only punishment for an illegal throw is that rock must be taken off the ice and is no longer in play for that end. If it has hit other stones, everything goes back to where it was before as if that throw never happened.

There are no in-game punishments for multiple infractions.

Under normal circumstances, game umpires are situated at the end of each sheet during curling play. From that angle, it can be hard for them to see if granite touches are made.

Since Sweden called out Kennedy’s throws to the officials’ attention on Friday, World Curling, the sport's governing body, told teams for the remainder of the tournament it would place umpires at the center of the ice between the two sheets while multiple games are being played.

In Saturday’s statement, though, the governing body reiterated “World Curling does not currently use video replay to re-umpire game decisions,” the statement read. “Decisions made during a game are final.”