The Canadian curler at the centre of a cheating row at the Winter Olympics has denied any wrongdoing, accusing the Swedish team of deliberately trying to “catch us in the act”.
On Saturday, World Curling confirmed that Canada had escaped punishment despite being accused of breaking the rules in the 8-6 victory over Sweden on Friday night. However, the sport’s governing body did warn Canada about their abusive langugage and introduced emergency spot checks on Saturday afternoon to make sure teams were not cheating when releasing the stone.
A bad-tempered game erupted when Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson told Canada’s Marc Kennedy he was double-touching the stone on the penultimate end, which led to Kennedy responding with an expletive.
Speaking after Canada had lost 9-5 to Switzerland on Saturday afternoon, Kennedy insisted he was innocent of any wrongdoing. “I can’t think of once in my entire career where I’ve done something to gain a competitive advantage by cheating,” he said. “And I take that very seriously. And it’s been a really long career. So when you get called out, my instinct was to be a little bit of a bulldog. I don’t regret defending myself or my teammates in that moment. I just probably regret the language I used.”
The Curling Canada chief, Nolan Thiessen, said it was a poor choice of words from Kennedy. “I think heat of the moment, I would allow for as well,” Thiessen said. “Something was said in his ear which got him going. Head games get played in a lot of sports and things get said in competitive sport and I think this was one of those situations. Do I wish Mark didn’t drop an F-bomb? Yeah.”
World Curling has introduced electronic handles on the stones at these Games, which flash red if players are still making contact with the stone beyond the hog line, the point where curlers must let go of the stone during delivery. However, the Swedes believed Kennedy was touching the stone and not the handle containing the sensor, meaning the red lights did not flash. Replays seemed to back Eriksson up, although officials did not intervene during the contest.
“We told the officials,” said Eriksson. “They came out and they misread the rules, sadly. Because they thought double-touching any part of the rock is OK. And then they found out that was wrong. You can only touch the electronic part of the handle.”
In a statement, World Curling confirmed it did not currently use video replay to re-umpire game decisions and would not change the result. “Decisions made during a game are final,” it added.
However, on Saturday, Kennedy vented his anger at the Swedish team for calling him out. “I know we’re not the only team that they’ve done that to,” he said. “They have come up with a plan here at the Olympics, as far as I know, to catch teams in the act at the hog line. It was planned right from the word go yesterday, from the words that were being said by their coaches and the way they were running to the officials.”
Eriksson hit back by saying he was confident that Kennedy had not followed the rules – having watched the video. “I don’t think he has slept too well, while I slept like a baby,” he added.
World Curling did, however, say it would be introducing spot checks to ensure the rules were followed.It also sent an email to every team in the Winter Olympics, reminding them that not using the handle was illegal. Canada was also warned that any repeat of the bad language would result in sanctions.
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