Cheating in the most-polite sport, curling and what is "sledhead?"

0:28This is a special edition of Up First. He told them to buzz off, but in stronger words, on live television. And this, in the worlds of curling, was totally shocking. Why, this isn't the first time Canada's curling team has been accused of cheating. Plus, Olympic organizers on thin ice, they promised a sustainable winter games, but did they live up to that pledge? NPR's Ruth Sherlock will have that story. And have you heard of the term sled head? Even a slight impact on the wall could cause the brain to move within the skull. Move within the skull. And no helmet is going to protect you from that.

1:06We'll talk about the risks to the brain athletes face when competing in high-speed sledding events. I'm Ian Martinez, and this is Up First Winter Games.

1:22It's Monday, February 16th, and here's what you need to know. Norway's Johannes Klabo won his fourth gold medal these games, making him the most decorated winter Olympian of all time. The cross-country star now has a total of nine career Olympic gold medals, and his win on Sunday cements his place as one of the most dominant skiers the sport has ever seen. And get this, he may not be done yet. The 29-year-old still has two more events where he's the favorite for the top spot. Speaking of gold medals and history, Brazilian skier Lucas Pinheiro Broughton took home gold in the men's giant slalom, marking the first winter Olympic medal ever for South America.

2:02And the Olympic drought continues for Michaela Schifrin as she failed to make the podium in the women's giant slalom on Sunday, finishing 11th. Italy's Federica Brigioni took home her second gold of the games. NPR's Brian Mann was there and has more on Schifrin's performance and what she said after the race. This is definitely not that big dramatic comeback moment. The Giant Solom is not her best event. She was injured in this event a couple of years ago. That said, as she came by and talked with us, she looked incredibly upbeat, incredibly positive. She said she was really hopeful that she was within touching distance of the leaders.

2:39And so she's got one more event here, the slalom, which is her big race. That's gonna come on Wednesday. This is her chance to bring home a medal of some kind for the US. We'll see if that can happen. Normally, curling has a reputation for being one of the more, shall we say, polite sports at the Olympics. But now an alleged cheating scandal is rocking the Olympic curling world. And things have gotten pretty heated between the men's Canadian and Swedish teams. NPR's Ping Huang has more on to touch or not to touch. What is happening, Ping? 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.

3:23If 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 the 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, yeah, so why does that matter? Why does this double-touch matter so much? 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.

3:57There 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 a 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.

4:25Okay, so what's been Canada's response? 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. He told them to buzz off, but in stronger words, on live television. And this, in the world of curling, was totally shocking. Because as you mentioned, it's a very polite sport. It's usually polite, wholesome, very family-friendly. So it's been a few days. I mean, what does Team Canada say about all this? So Canada says that this was a strategy to get them off their game. And they have suggested that they continue to be persecuted.

5:00So on Saturday, Canada's women's team got a rock pulled for the same exact reason. And their skip, Rachel Homan, said that they might be getting targeted for having the maple leaf on their backs. I got to admit, Bing, I've watched this highlight over and over again, at least 20, 30 times. He has his hand on the handle and then maybe drags his hand on the rest of it before doing the little touch. I mean, I guess, is that allowed or what are we actually kind of discussing here? So, A, I think the problem is that he was touching any part of the rock at all as it was passing the hog line. That was like the main violation.

5:38You know, his finger was still held on the line, according to the Swedes. Not according to Canada, but according to the Swedes, as it crossed that green line that you see on the screen. And I will say also that after this, world curling did issue a clarification of the rules, which said that at no point during the game should you ever be touching a rock in forward motion. And, you know, you have to release it from the handle, obviously, but you should not be touching it afterwards. So that was a clarification that they made after this whole scandal started. And the handle has a sensor, right? So, I mean, everyone would know once he lets it go.

6:08Yeah, absolutely. Right. Like, if he had been holding the sensor when it crossed the hog line, it would have gone off and the stone would have been automatically disqualified. But the issue here was that he let go of the sensor and was touching the stone as it crossed the hog line, according to the allegations here. And maybe, you know, maybe your own eyes. I'm going to watch it probably 50 more times before the Olympics is over. Maybe you can figure this out, eh? You and all the internet. I'll come down with my own ruling and everyone will have to live with it. Okay, Olympic officials, what have they said?

6:38Okay, so they have responded. They said that they didn't see it happen during the match, so they couldn't call a violation. They don't use video replays, so they're not going to go back and re-adjudicate it. But on Saturday, the world curling officials said that they had issued a warning to Canada for inappropriate language because of the swears that had gone through. And they also said that going forward that they were going to be putting more officials into the game to watch the hog line as people were throwing their rocks. Now, another twist in this was that just yesterday they said, never mind, we're not going to do that.

7:10We talked with the teams and decided that the officials will be hanging around, but they're only going to be observing when they're invited to or when asked. So that's the latest on this, but that does not stop the entire internet from stepping in to adjudicate this. And I have to say the memes have been amazing. Oh, and can I say just one more thing? Because it's Canada and Canadians are known around the world to be so nice. And then to see him mouth that word, I think it's a shock. Total shock. Yeah, absolutely. And another thing, A, is that like everyone says that the Canadians are really, really good at curling.

7:43Like they don't need to be cheating or even, you know, like they shouldn't have the wisp of cheating anywhere near them. They're already so good. So, yeah, it's been a shock to the curling world for sure. All right. Now, you're also covering speed skating, and this is one of my favorite sports. I love speedsters. Tell us what's going on with American Jordan Stolls, because he is absolutely killing it there. Yeah, he is completely on fire, A. It's been amazing. I watched his second of four races this weekend, and he came in first in the 500 meters. He set another Olympic record, his second at these Olympics, and he did it with Simone Biles watching the stands.

8:17So it has been amazing. He is now halfway to his goal of getting four gold medals at these Olympics. And, you know, he said that he was happy with the results after, but he also said that he was already looking forward to his next race, which is the 1500 meters on Thursday. All right. Now, before I let you go, Ping, I heard that you actually struck a little gold. Yes. Thank you for letting me brag about this. So I have gotten for myself the gold medal of pins here. I have gotten myself a Snoop Dogg pin. And this was the situation of being in the right place at the right time. So for a little context here, Olympic pin trading is huge.

8:52It's like its own Olympic sport. And it's something that both attendees and athletes are very fervent about doing. On Sunday, yesterday, I was on my way to the mix zone after the women's 500 meters. I was going to talk to some speed skaters after their race. And I happened to be out in the mix zone at the same time that Snoop Dogg and his entourage were leaving. He was like, I don't know, like 10 feet ahead of me. I took a very blurry photo. So, but, you know, someone in the back of his entourage looked over at me, saw my NPR sweater. I don't know if that was what did it or not, but she handed me his pin.

9:21And now I have a Snoop Dogg pin. It's pretty awesome. So no gin and juice, but pin and juice. I'm trying here. I'm trying. I know. I'm here for a day. NPR's ping-pong makes a lot. Thank you. Well, in Italy's bid to host the Olympics, which is taking place in Milan and in towns across the Italian Alps, Organizers promised that it would be an environmentally sustainable Olympics. In fact, they said they would actually use these games to highlight the importance of this sensitive alpine mountain ecosystem and actually showcase how to protect it. But environmental groups are telling a different story.

9:57And NPR's Ruth Sherlock is here to discuss. So, Ruth, you visited the town of Cortina. That's one of the main places where the Olympics is being held. Environmental activists are a little worried. Why? Well, for many reasons. But one was that, you know, when we visited, the stands were being set up for the audience to watch the world's top skiers. But there was one thing conspicuously missing, which is snow. You know, the mountain peaks were bare. There was just yellow grass. And the only snow you could see really was on the pistes. And that was artificial snow. You know, the snowfall is getting less and less with climate change with these shorter winters.

10:37and environmentalists say it's going to take huge amounts of energy and water to have this much artificial snow. In fact, official documents show they were estimating that for these Olympics, they may need as much as 380 Olympic swimming pools worth. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And, you know, it's funny because I've had friends of mine that love traveling the world looking for snow to ski on. They've been saying for years that snow is getting harder to find. Now, that amount of water, Ruth, that you mentioned, where are they getting it? Well, this is the thing. they're having to take it from alpine springs and rivers in the area.

11:10An environmental activist took me to see one of the sites that they're drawing the water from. And it was this once pristine landscape just kind of turned into a building site. There was bits of broken pipes and huge mounds of earth and trees cut down. And they are taking gallons and gallons per second. And the problem is, you know, what is the impact on local biodiversity on the local ecology? These rivers are already stressed by climate change and human use. And the thing is, we don't know because the in-depth environmental assessment hasn't been done. In fact, that's the case, A, for about 60 % of the some 98 infrastructure projects that have been approved for these games.

11:51Yeah, 98. So close to 100. It sounds like a lot. And that's the thing with the Olympics. I mean, it does leave a big footprint. But when it comes to the landscape of this place, How is the Olympics changing the landscape? Well, you know, Cortina is this traditionally tiny town, this jewel in the beautiful Dolomites, this UNESCO World Heritage Site. And when I was there, I counted about 20 cranes for different construction projects. So it will have an impact. The organizers had tried to say, you know, that they were going to try to use existing sporting equipment, existing arenas, existing sporting spaces so that they don't have to rebuild them.

12:29And that is the case, actually. They've managed to kind of use existing structures in most cases. But, you know, one of the most controversial points is about the bobsleigh track in Cortina. There was hopes initially that they would use the bobsleigh track in Innsbruck in nearby Austria. But Matteo Salvini, Italy's deputy prime minister, he intervened and said, no, it's a point of national pride that we have this sport in Italy. And so they had to kind of completely redo the bobsleigh track in Cortina. And that resulted in hundreds of larch trees being cut down from this old growth forest. And it now dominates the landscape.

13:07And, you know, some of these infrastructure projects actually won't be finished for the Games. They were approved as part of a sort of local development. And it's going to go on for years. It involves new roads and even tunnels through the mountainside. These projects, though, they're always sold as the benefit for the local area once the Olympics leave. then that'll be something that they can leave behind. But I mean, that sounds like it's going to be the legacy of these games, for better or worse. You know, that is certainly the hope to kind of drive more economic development in these rural areas.

13:39But, you know, I spoke with a local councillor who's the head of the opposition in the local council there, and she said many, many people don't want this development because they worry it's going to transform this pristine rural landscape. In fact, you know, she said the Olympics in 1956, the last time they were held in Cortina, the climatic conditions were right. They even had one of the ice skating events on a frozen over lake. But here we are having to kind of try to recreate the conditions with artificial snow. And then also back then there was room for development for people to come to Cortina.

14:17But now the place is inundated with tourists already. On one single day, you can get like 3 ,000 people coming to this one lake for selfies because these places have been promoted on social media. And it's just, you know, she says maybe because of climate change, because of this over-tourism, now isn't really the time to drive development to this area. Wow. The price of a pretty selfie. Yeah. It could be high, right? That's NPR international correspondent Ruth Sherlock. Ruth, thanks a lot. Thank you very much. If you've ever seen the movie Cool Runnings, you know one of the major risks of sliding down the ice in a bobsled is crashing.

14:56These athletes are racing over 80, sometimes 90 miles an hour, and a crash is brutal on the body and brain. But there's a lesser known risk that's catching the attention of scientists, and that is the phenomenon known as sled head. Here's my conversation with Emily Kwong, co-host of NPR's science podcast, Shortwave. All right, so Emily, besides bobsled, tell us about some of the other sliding sports. Okay, so you got luge. That's where athletes are lying on their backs and initiating those turns with their very strong calves. And then there's skeleton, which I think has the coolest helmets in the Olympics because those athletes are racing headfirst.

15:34Oh, they are very nice. Yeah. Wow. Very arty. Uh-huh. Very colorful as well. Yeah. And you mentioned aerodynamic, right? The helmets are definitely aimed to get that racer, to get the athlete going as fast as possible. Cool as this looks, this sport, all these sports, they come with broken bones. They come with concussions and one of the lesser known ailments, sled head. Sled head. I know what a dead head is. Someone that travels around with a grateful dead. But what's sled head? Wow. My dad would really appreciate that joke. The umbrella term of sled head describes a wide range of symptoms. Every case is different, but on the list is dizziness, exhaustion, nausea, discomfort with bright lights or loud noises.

16:18Some people talk about cognitive problems, forgetfulness, emotional dysregulation issues. But what's so interesting to me about Sledhead is the culprit is not a crash. It's not anything dramatic. It's just the routine vibrational exposure and high G-forces that these athletes are experiencing. So if someone's seen Top Gun, they might remember what G-forces are. but remind anyone that hasn't. Yeah, so G-force is just the force felt by the body due to acceleration. So for you and me just chilling in these office chairs, we feel... We feel G-forces? We have Gs right now. Oh, all right. We're pulling bad Gs.

16:55One G. One G? Yeah, that's the force of gravity. Okay. But think about being in a car, going around a tight turn. The forces are more intense than that of Earth's gravity. You may even get up to two Gs. And for these bobsledders, they are experiencing up to five Gs. It's like being on a massive roller coaster. That's like just squishing your face, right? I mean, that's what that is, right? It's intense. In fact, I want to show you a clip from the IBSF World Cup just a few weeks ago. This is the German team. So they're super fast. And it's easy to just watch the speed, the athleticism. But think about the acceleration they're experiencing on those turns.

17:39Their brains are like going in multiple directions as they're being whipped around the track. And I mean, this is not a smooth ride. I know that the ice looks kind of smooth to us at home, but it's bumpy. And the concern is even a slight impact on the wall could cause the brain to move within the skull. Move within the skull. And know how that is going to protect you from that. No helmet's going to protect you from that. So the concern for Peter McCarthy, he is a neurophysiologist at the University of South Wales, is what happens when the soft tissue of the brain moves in one direction and the skull moves in the other direction.

18:17There's also, of course, the issue of nerve tissue stretching. And it's not just your brain. It's your brain stem, which connects your brain to your spinal cord. That's kind of important for your whole nervous system. So all these impacts, they add up. They add up. Okay, so how do they add up? Well, think about the fact that these athletes, when they are training, they are doing these runs multiple times a day. They're competitive. They want to get as good as possible. They want to practice. And if they have a high G-force run, which, by the way, the sport wouldn't be monitoring for. No one's tracking G-forces on the track.

18:53So they're getting exposure to these forces. Maybe they don't know. Maybe they have some sled head. But they're like, eh, I'm going to keep going. If their coaches don't pull them and they're not recovering from those races, the concern for scientists is that the accumulated trauma can create long-term damage. And this is creating a real conversation in the sliding sports because over the last 15 years, there have been a number of high-profile suicides and drug overdoses from retired athletes, some of whom have had brain health issues. So the question is, how can we make the sport maybe safer when the federations that oversee it, they're looking out for concussions for sure.

19:32But are they monitoring sled head in the same way? But is it, wait, okay. So why wouldn't it be the same thing, sled head and concussions? Yes. Okay. This is the number one mystery for me working on this story. I found a neuropsychologist named Aaliyah Snyder who used to be a skeleton athlete. And she's made it her mission to work with athletes on issues like this. She treats athletes for sled head. And what she says it is, is sub-concussive impacts. Sub-concussive. I know, we're getting real doctorate here. Those are hits that don't lead to brain damage outright, but maybe create gradual wear and tear on the brain and the nervous system.

20:07And the concern for her is that over time, it prevents your body from tolerating the stress of the sled and can create exponential damage down the line. So that sounds like it could be a career ender for people. It was for Aaliyah. She had to medically retire after just two years of competing, and she loved it. She used to be a sailor. She loved the speed of skeleton. It felt very right to her, but her brain couldn't tolerate it. She said, I loved the sport, but the sport did not love me. And it inspired her to become a doctor. So that's pretty cool. Now she basically treats athletes for their sled head.

20:42She rehabilitates them, and she says it's totally possible if sled head is caught and taken seriously early. So wait, taking serious, so why wouldn't that be taken seriously? Well, I think what might need to happen is culture change within the sport. The governing bodies for the sport are aware of sled head. There's been press coverage of it. And in fact, the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association, last I heard, has a study that they're doing right now involving concussion and concussive-like symptoms. That's a step in the right direction, but maybe the sport needs to change. You know, Peter McCarthy says we could attach sensors on the helmets.

21:20That would allow us to know the G-force exposure of these athletes. We've seen again and again in these games, A, that athletes will happily compete injured if glory or money or fame or their lifelong dream is on the line. So unless there's some kind of regulatory change or culture change within the sliding sports, Sluthead is just going to continue. Well, the NFL actually has made some strides a little bit on concussions. With CTE. With CTE, right. Yes, that's the degenerative brain disease. It's different than what we're talking about, but it's the same kind of internal recognition within the sport that is what drew my attention to this story.

21:59And I think these scientists to this very under-researched topic, Sledhead. NPR's Emily Kwong. She co-hosts NPR's Science Podcast, Shortwave. Emily, thanks. Thank you so much, Jay. I'm you Martinez, and that's a special audio preview of Up First Winter Games. If you're an Olympics fan like me, and I know that you are, You can catch the team on video every afternoon on NPR's YouTube page. That's youtube.com slash NPR. And don't forget to smash those like and subscribe buttons.

22:31Today's special episode of Up First was edited by Eric Whitney. Our visual editors include Nicole Werbeck, Elizabeth Gillis, Grace Raver, and Pablo Valdivia. It was produced by Lauren McGaughy, Brianna Scott, Ana Perez, Barry Gordner, and Elizabeth Baker. We get engineering support from Jay Sizz, Andy Huther, Becky Brown, and Josephine Neonine. Our executive producers are Adam Verdugo, Jay Shaler, and Samantha Melbourne-Weaver.