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Exclusive: British curlers overturn Canadian Olympics ban
By Neil Wilson
November 26 - Britain's Olympic curlers have beaten a ban that threatened to deny them access to cutting-edge technology at this Winter’s Olympic Games in Vancouver.
Hosts Canada, the world's number one curling nation, had refused to allow Britain access for their video cameras which service their performance analysis computers.
The technology provided by a Fife company has helped Scottish teams skipped by Lockerbie’s David Murdoch and Perth’s Eve Muirhead to win two world titles this year.
Each time the Scots beat Canadians in the finals.
For the Olympics the local organising committee refused the British access to the television platforms behind each rink where the camera needed to be placed to film the footage that is fed into the analysts' computers.
It was the second time the Canadians have tried to steal a home advantage.
Already they had refused the rest of the world's bobsleighers permission to record footage of themselves in action on the Vancouver bob run to prevent their rivals creating simulation programmes.
That ban still stands but the British Olympic Association (BOA) took up the curling case, and with the support of the World Curling Federation (WCF) which is headquartered in Perth, have forced the Canadians to back down.
David Hay, the men’s Olympic team coach, said: "We take a cameraman to very event and have done for a number of years.
"This is the first time we have been denied the facility we need.
"We wanted to be able to be able to film our own games, not necessarily those of other teams, but Canada is not big into this technology in curling and they tried to stop us doing it.
"We are a nation of 30,000 curlers playing a nation where there are a million players.
"We have to try new things to get an edge and we’ve a year or two lead on this.
"I can tell you, for instance, the statistics of every country's skip who’ll be action, what they are likely to do in any circumstance.
"We haven't talked much about it in public but it’s not a great secret.
"The computer programme we use can be bought on the open market.
"What's important is how you use it and the experience you have it using it."
The computer programme is used for playing analysis by eight Scottish League clubs and was an important element of Durham’s cricketers winning the County Championships for the last two seasons.
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