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Canada’s Rachel Homan during the women’s curling round-robin session against Switzerland on Saturday. Homan was accused of a double touch during the match.Fatima Shbair/The Associated Press
Canada came to the Olympics with a bunch of international relations goals. In a time of global unrest, we would remind everyone of how laid back we are, but also vigorous. Fun, but not overbearing. Like that guy at the party who makes a point of paying one nice compliment to everyone, then leaves before the sambuca comes out.
What’d we do instead? Rocked into the room, steamed across it and took a swing at Sweden.
I am not a curling expert. However, like most of us, I am a bloodhound for dissembling.
Sweden accused Canada of cheating in the stupidest possible way, gently tapping a just released curling rock while it’s still more than a hundred feet from its destination. A rock weighs about 40 lbs. It’s like blowing on a curveball as it heads to the plate. Still, it’s against the rules. Just don’t do it.
The non-guilty response to that is, Did I? My bad.
Canada’s reaction, through team member Marc Kennedy, was, How DARE you suggest I would ever do such a thing?
Then Sweden showed everyone the video of him appearing to do such a thing.
At which point, Canada’s approach changed to, How DARE you record us as we break the rule we just told everyone we would never break?
A few hours on, Switzerland was caught on tape accusing the Canadian men’s team of the same thing.
Canada’s men’s curling team says Sweden had plans to catch opponents out for infractions
The infection then spread to Canadian women’s team skip, Rachel Homan.
Ms. Homan was accused of another double touch during an encounter with the Swiss, but this time by an official. They’d beefed up oversight after Mr. Kennedy’s outburst.
Like their male counterparts, the Canadian women reacted with umbrage (minus the swearing).
In remarkable CBC coverage, the ongoing live argument was laid over a replay. You could hear Ms. Homan saying, “I’ve never done it in my life,” just as video clearly shows her doing it, while in her life.
The conclusion is inescapable – Canada is the bad guy in this story.
Nothing wrong with being the bad guy sometimes, especially as it applies to something as meaningless as sport.
Being the bad guy lets people know that you aren’t going to allow yourself to be pushed around. Often, the bad guy is more fun. No one wants to be put in the position of being Sweden, international curling’s hall monitor.
But a good bad guy has some swagger. She seems in control, like she’s having a fun time being bad.
These Canadian curling teams are not fun bad guys. They come off like the sort of competitors who need so desperately to win that they will do anything – even things that are pointless – in order to get there. This is Drone Scandal 2.0, only without police involvement.
They also don’t seem particularly sharp. It’s the Olympics. There are cameras. They are all trained on you, the stars of the show.
How did anyone involved in this think they were getting away with it? And, once caught, why did they think throwing a tantrum was the way out of it?
However much sports doesn’t matter, curling matters even less, in the sense that the vast majority of the world’s population has never seen it, never mind played it. This has zero to do with curling.
Had Canada played this cool – ‘If I did what you’re saying, I’m sorry. I honestly don’t remember doing it’ – the videos now circulating everywhere online would be played with a sappy soundtrack, and be about our remarkable sportsmanship. Canada would still be in with just as much of a chance at winning two curling golds.
I can believe there is a world in which the movement – reaching out very slightly while your hand is already extended – is completely unconscious. I can further believe the Canadians actually don’t believe they’re doing it, and weren’t lying about that.
But now they know and no one’s ‘fessed up. The proper reaction to that by the rest of Canada isn’t anger or defensiveness. It’s a kind of bemused, parental head shake: ‘What are you thinking? Go tell them you’re sorry.’
The Paris drone scandal was another instance of Canada being bad at being bad guys. It made us all look ridiculous. Canada’s sporting apparatus worked hard to bury it. Then we come to Italy and start digging it up. Great work.
The Olympics matters to Canada, writ large, insomuch as it is a lot of the world’s only real chance to see us on the job. Even the most politically engaged foreigners probably have no idea what we’re all about. They know the person in charge. They know that we’re not getting along with our neighbours. That’s it.
The purpose of the Olympics is putting yourselves out there so that people can get a look at you. They draw broad, occasionally unfair, conclusions based on what they see, and apply them to the athletes’ home countries. The Chinese are stoic. The Australians look like they’re permanently up for a good time. The Norwegians cheat on their girlfriends, but they will at least admit it on live TV.
After falling into the cheating trap in two Olympics in a row, whether anything is proved or not, Canada is becoming the country that will do anything to win, minus any cunning or suavity. Who rates such a country?
Stood against that kind of reputational damage, gold medals are meaningless.
There’s an easy way out of this – stop struggling. Stop acting like our curling reputation matters more than our national one. Be the bigger man and woman, even if you don’t think you did anything wrong. If you want to get yours back, do it in the standings, not in the press releases.
If the Swedens of the world want to slap away an outstretched hand, then it’s them who will look silly and uptight.
Or go the other way. Embrace villainy. Touch every rock. Nail someone with a broom. But pick a lane. Canada can’t be the good guys and bad guys at the same time.
