I wrote this column in the summer, but it hasn’t lost its relevance….
As a rule curling doesn’t really do controversy.
A Canadian tested positive for a “work-out supplement” a few weeks ago, but he was only a reserve in their World Championship team. So, although, it has raised a few eyebrows over there, it’s not as if Matt Dumontelle is being talked about as their new Ben Johnson.
Apart from that misdemeanour which has copped Mr Dumontelle a two-year ban, it would be a struggle to find any curling incidents that have shocked down the years. The odd broom gets snapped in anger. But that’s about it.
Curling, specifically Scottish Curling, has however found the ability to shock this week.
And that’s because they have made a selection ruling that perhaps only the decision in Taekwondo to pass over a world number one for the Olympics can compete with in terms of its lunacy.
Try and get your head round this one, if you can.
In curling Scotland has a team of women world champions. Those world champions, Team Muirhead, are the only full-time rink in the country, and as you might expect, are a country mile ahead of the rest. The fact that they are young, engaging, photogenic and have moved the sport’s profile into new territory is a bonus.
To defend their title they will have to first win the Scottish Championships again next year. Nothing wrong with that.
But, it’s an Olympic year and the great minds of the sport have decreed that Eve Muirhead and her team-mates shouldn’t have the distraction of two big events in one year. That would be far too much for them to cope with. And in any event those same great minds want to broaden curling’s power-base in Scotland, and believe the 2014 Worlds would be an ideal opportunity to give somebody else a shot.
So, to boil it down, a team of world champions is being prevented from defending their title by their own governing body. Only in Scotland..
The sport’s performance director, Dave Crosbee, has justified the policy by citing British Cycling, who he says have stood down high profile athletes when the Olympics are approaching or have just passed.
If it’s good enough for Sir Chris Hoy, it should be good enough for you Eve, is the gist of it.
This comparison though is a false as the debarring of the women’s and men’s Olympic teams from their national championships is absurd.
If you dig a bit deeper to the Hoy/Muirhead analogy, in Hoy you won’t find a cyclist who was kept in cold storage every four years so he would peak at the Olympics and not be distracted by other titles. In every one of the years that Hoy won Olympic golds 2004, 2008 and 2012 – he also won World gold. If he was distracted, he did a good job of hiding it.
Hoy was certainly never stood down for an event of equivalent standing in cycling as the Worlds are in curling. Not unless it was his choice, or he was injured.
So the argument that it is somehow for Team Muirhead’s own good to be kept out of the Scottish and Worlds is blown out of the water.
The second strand of Scottish Curling’s rationale is that they need to intervene to try and contrive strength in depth. And on this front they show an alarming lack of knowledge of their own sport (where the chasing pack are nowhere near senior world level so shouldn’t be exposed to it), and of sport in general.
Sporting excellence has to be earned, not manufactured.
Crosbee was right in one sense. There is a cycling parallel to this controversy that bears scrutiny. And it involves Hoy. Just not the wide of the mark one he has suggested.
Hoy did have to step aside. But when he wasn’t selected for the individual sprint in London last summer it was because the man he was stepping aside for, Jason Kenny, had proven himself in the sporting arena as worthy of taking his place.
The only way Team Muirhead should be thwarted in their bid for back-to-back World titles is through competition, not discrimination.
It should embarrass Scottish Curling coach Rhona Martin if she has gone along with this decision, which it appears she has. Everyone remembers her “Stone of Destiny” to win Olympic gold at Salt Lake City in 2002. But not so many remember that a few days later she played in the Scottish Championships and was beaten by a team who went on to win the Worlds.
That’s what sport is all about. To be the best, you have to beat the best.