Ping Huang

On streaming services, this Olympics has far outpaced the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

In Italy, more than half the population is tuned in.

Ping Huang, NPR News, Milan.

He told them to buzz off, but in stronger words, on live television.

And this, in the worlds of curling, was totally shocking.

All right, A. So in Curling, players throw a rock down a sheet of ice, and you have to release it before it gets to something called the hog line.

If you don't release it before then, it gets disqualified, it gets burned, you're supposed to take it out of play.

Now, the controversy here is over the allegation of a double touch.

In a match on Friday, the Swedes accused a Canadian player of touching the stone after he released it, keeping his finger on the stone as it crossed the hog line, which is a big no in curling.

Okay, so there's two things about the situation, A. Number one is the allegation itself, and number two is how the Canadians responded.

So, for some context, as you mentioned, curling is a super polite sport,

There is something called the spirit of curling, which is like their code of ethics.

It's all about good sportsmanship.

And one critical part of that is that if you have a violation, you need to call it yourself.

You call your own fouls.

So if a stone gets touched by anything after it crosses the hog line by a hand, a foot, a broom, you're supposed to call it on your own.

You're supposed to call a violation and take it out of play.

In this case, the Swede said that the Canadian player had touched the stone beyond the hog line and that he'd done it not just once, but several times over the course of the game.

Okay, so the Canadians denied it, and then it got super heated.

So Canadian curler Mark Kennedy hurled an expletive at the Swedes between the ninth and the tenth inning.