Curling rocked again as 2 stones are stolen at the Milan Cortina Paralympics

By TALES AZZONI

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — It’s another scandal for curling, this time at the Paralympics.

Two stones that were going to be used in the wheelchair curling event that began Wednesday at the Milan Cortina Paralympic Games have been stolen.

The incident came a couple of weeks after the sport was in the headlines during the Olympics as the Canadian team was accused of cheating.

World Curling told The Associated Press that local authorities were investigating the circumstances that led to the granite rocks being stolen from the Curling Olympic Stadium.

“The spare stones from the set are now being used and have been brought to the same specifications as the rest of the set so there has been no impact on the competition,” World Curling said in an email.

The Milan Cortina Paralympics will officially kick off with the opening ceremony on Friday, but the schedule for wheelchair curling started Wednesday.

The Olympic scandal rocked the usually sedate world of curling — a sport that tends to fall off the radar outside the Olympics.

In the round-robin phase in Cortina, Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Marc Kennedy, Canada’s vice skip, of double-touching the rock after initially releasing it down the sheet of ice. Kennedy responded with an outburst full of expletives. Canada was cleared of wrongdoing and eventually won its first gold in men’s curling since the 2014 Sochi Games.

The Canadian women’s team had also been accused of the same double-touch violation.

AP Winter Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games