By John Hodge
The Canadian men’s curling team at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games is back in more ways than one. Not only did the rink get back into the win column with a 6-3 victory over China on Sunday night, they also no longer need to worry about rocks being disqualified by umpires they consider unqualified.
The squad from the Glencoe Club in Calgary, Alta. went viral following an on-ice incident between third Marc Kennedy and Swedish third Oskar Eriksson on Friday night.
Eriksson accused Kennedy of double-touching stones during his delivery, leading to a verbal altercation during which Kennedy told Eriksson to “f–k off” multiple times. Eriksson claimed there was video of Kennedy double-touching stones, which was later posted online by a member of the Swedish media.
In response to the controversy, World Curling stationed two umpires across the four sheets of ice to monitor all deliveries starting on Saturday afternoon. It didn’t take long for one of them to intervene.
Rachel Homan, the skip of the Canadian women’s team, had her first rock of Saturday evening’s game against Switzerland taken off by an umpire, spoiling a great chance for a deuce. Instead, she was forced to draw for one on her second stone. Homan was clearly upset with the umpire after the end, calling the decision “unbelievable.” Her team eventually lost 8-7, falling to 1-3.
Brad Jacobs, the skip of the Canadian men’s team, chose a different word to describe the disqualification of Homan’s first rock.
“Despicable, that’s the word that comes to mind. When we all sat up there and watched that happen, I thought it was despicable. I felt immediately like, as Canadian curlers, we were targeted. To go out and pull her rock like that, I think it was a tragedy,” said Jacobs.
“Really rough way to start that game, but we were really proud of watching her be able to get in the hack and throw a draw for one. They still played a great game and battled hard all night.”
“I feel for her,” said Kennedy. “It’s unfortunate that we have athletes having to change their release mid-event of the Olympics – the same release they’ve been working on for eight or 10 years. It’s very unfortunate.”
Canadian coach Paul Webster believes Sweden’s complaints were valid, though he disagreed with World Curling’s attempt to address them partway through the sport’s highest-profile event, believing this issue should have been dealt with a long time ago.
“If you listen to what Sweden said, I think they’re right,” he said. “This has been a problem that they’ve tried to identify to our international federation, and it wasn’t acted on. Now, we’re trying to quickly fix things at an Olympics, and I think it’s the wrong thing to do.”
“We have untrained people doing things they’ve never done before and we’re not at some bonspiel (curling tournament) in Saskatchewan just trying things out. We’re at the Olympics.
“I have a lot of respect for people who are here and volunteering their time, but I think we really have to question if we’re doing new things at the Olympic Games. We’ve had four years to prepare. Our teams, all the 20 teams here, have done a really good job preparing for these Olympic Games. I would like our international federation to match that effort.”
There is no video review in curling, leaving umpires with only a split-second to determine whether or not a stone has been properly delivered. Even if video review existed, games are not filmed at an angle that would make double-touches easy to see on replay.
“When you see umpires come out that are not trained to do what they’re doing, and all of a sudden are pulling rocks out of games as if they’re burnt stones, that’s a disaster,” said Jacobs.
“A double-touch stone or whatever it is, none of these officials have ever gone through any of their courses. They’ve got all the levels and so on, but there’s not a PowerPoint presentation out there on double-touch stones,” said Webster.
“I would challenge everyone with their iPhone to set it up at the curling club, have someone do (a double-touch), and have a guy the size of (Canadian second) Brett Gallant between you and the rock, and then you tell me without a doubt if they did it. You can’t.”
It wasn’t just Canada that had stones pulled after the umpires were deployed, as Great Britain second Bobby Lammie had a stone disqualified against Germany on Sunday morning. Though he was pleased to see his country wasn’t the only one penalized, Jacobs still didn’t care for the umpire’s decision.
“(The Lammie ruling) made me feel like we weren’t being targeted, which is good,” said Jacobs. “At the same time, if he threw that rock that way against us, personally, I would never ever want that rock to be removed. He did nothing wrong, in my opinion.”
World Curling reversed its deployment of the two umpires before the Sunday evening draw at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium. Officials returned to only monitoring potential violations at the request of teams, as is typically the case at major curling events.
“I think they made a good decision,” said Kennedy. “If you think somebody’s violating, you bring somebody out to take a look. I think that’s a step in the right direction.
“They’ll have to take a look at the rule book again and make the changes that they want to make going forward. It sucks, but you’re in the middle of it, so you just adapt and do the best you can.”
“It felt great (playing under normal officiating standards),” said Jacobs. “We went out there and we played an awesome game against China … without any interference or distractions or anything like that.”
The Canadian men are now 4-1 after their win over China, placing them second in the standings behind undefeated Switzerland. The team will play winless Czechia on Monday afternoon, then engage in a heavyweight matchup against Great Britain on Tuesday night.
Since the Nagano 1998 Olympic Winter Games, a round robin record of 6-3 or better has always been good enough to earn a playoff berth in men’s or women’s play. Bruce Mouat’s rink out of the Gogar Park Curling Club in Edinburgh, Scotland is the No. 1-ranked team in the world, but beating them would essentially clinch a spot in the semifinals for Canada, assuming they beat Czechia first.
“There’s opportunity in crisis, no matter how small the crisis, and there might be a blessing in disguise (dealing with all this controversy),” said Kennedy. “We cleaned up our releases and we’re throwing the rock really well right now, so maybe there’s a blessing in there, and we’ll take it and keep trying to get better.”
“Honestly, we always call the Olympics a five-ring circus,” said Webster. “You just don’t know what ring you’re going to be in.”
Lead photo by Anil Mungal/TCG
