Well hell’s bells, who knew the ice could get so hot? The Olympic curling community is still all in a twist about everything that’s gone on in the sport since a row broke out between the Sweden and Canada sides on Friday. “The whole spirit of curling is dead,” Canada’s Marc Kennedy said on Monday night after his team’s 8-2 victory against Czech Republic, which felt like a bold take coming from the man who started this entire farrago by repeatedly telling his Swedish opponent Oskar Eriksson to “fuck off” after Eriksson accused him of making an illegal double‑touch.
On Tuesday, the Canadians were outplaying the British. They beat them handily, 9-5, which means Bruce Mouat’s team have to beat the USA team and hope other results go their way if they’re going to make the semi-finals.
The way the Canadians play it, curling is a sport where a competitor is supposed to take his opponent’s word. “This whole trying to catch people in the act of an infraction sucks,” Kennedy said on Monday. “We don’t look for infractions at grand slams. We don’t look for that kind of stuff on tour. We just trust that the people around us aren’t trying to cheat. If somebody does something out of hand, it just gets dealt with in the moment, and you move on, you don’t need the officials to manage our game. That’s where the spirit of curling is in a little bit of trouble, and, honestly, that’s probably come from the quest for medals.”
And how. The row has turned out to be the biggest thing to happen to it since it was brought back into the Olympic programme in 1998. The slow-motion footage of Kennedy brushing the stone with his forefinger has gone viral, and the internet is overflowing with sloppy AI skits of Kennedy nudging ice hockey pucks and knocking over figure skaters at the ice rink. On TikTok someone put together a spoof of Kennedy and Eriksson in a whole Heated Rivalry situation, which has pulled in 2.5 million views. It’s fair to say the organisers were caught short by the speed and size of the reaction.
So, operating in a sport using gentleman's rules is great. It's wonderful when people are honest and courteous on the pitch/ice/field. The problem is that it works both ways.
Canada's player did break the rules. I don't know enough about Curling to say if it was a game changing infraction, but he did it at least once. Why he can't say "I messed up in the moment, I'm sorry, I won't do it again". Apparently attacking the other players, the officials, and the public is the better response.
Why hasn't his own coach suspended him? If this is a game of courtesy and trust then wouldn't the team take care of it internally? It's not the important, I guess.
To sum up: we end up with cameras, judges and replays when we can't trust the players to be honest. So far the Canadian team and the single finger infraction aren't demonstrating the kind of gentleman's honor needed to preserve the type of environment they begrudge losing.
"You should trust in honesty" cried the liar.
I find myself saying this a lot recently, but maybe I just started noticing it more: it often takes a few to ruin it for everyone — bad apples spoiling the bunch. Trust is a fragile thing and now everyone's looking around wondering who else might have broken it.
Maybe the others can rise above it and continue to be gentlemen with each other, but that player and that team aren't gonna shake the suspicion.
I'm astounded that a sport made it to the Olympic level without having more stringent observation in place. I used to play Ultimate (frisbee), and regular league play at the college level didn't have refs. Teams called their own fouls and such and for the most part it worked pretty well. I dunno if things have changed in the past few decades and refs are standard for all games now, but even back then once you were at the regional or national tournament level they had refs (called observers I believe) to make decisions if calls were contested.
If olympic curling had nothing like that my mind is literally blown