Curling beef ongoing months after Olympics; Canadian skip reportedly says Swedish team is 'nothing to me'

Canadian third Marc Kennedy was scrutinized for double-touching stones with his finger beyond the hog line and on the granite part of the rock in this year's Games. (Photo by Foto Olimpik/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

(NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Curling has long been regarded as a gentleman’s sport. But in the Milan Cortina Olympics, its ice was the breeding ground for a fiery exchange that breathed life into an international rivalry that’s apparently still kicking two months later.

Back in February, Swedish third Oskar Eriksson levied a serious cheating allegation against Canadian third Marc Kennedy, whom Eriksson accused of double-touching stones with his finger beyond the hog line and on the granite part of the rock.

Things boiled over after the ninth end of an 8-6 Canada victory in round-robin action of the men’s competition, which the Canadians eventually won gold in.

Kennedy snapped at Eriksson with a profanity-laced retort in a heated back-and-forth that went viral during this year’s Games. What followed was a temporary adjustment by World Curling that called for two umpires to move between the sheets, cycling through to watch hog lines up close while monitoring for infractions. That led to complaints, as reported by The Associated Press at the time, and World Curling reportedly swiftly eased back on its play surveillance.

Curling is a well-mannered sport, in which its participants are trusted to officiate themselves to a certain extent, with the spirit of the game in mind. Some curlers weren’t offended by Canada’s double-touching. Eriksson clearly was, and he still believes it makes a significant impact on matches.

“A lot of people have been talking about, like, ‘You can’t do anything with a finger on a 20-kilo granite rock,'” Eriksson said Thursday night, according to The Athletic, at Rock League, the world’s first professional curling league.

“But when it’s moving, it’s quite easy to give it a small push, and you can actually change the angle quite a bit more than the speed. So [Swedish media] wanted to see how big of a difference you can make with just a small touch with the finger.”

Eriksson was alluding to a video recently circulated by Swedish media outlet SVT that shows him demonstrating and explaining how a double-touch violation can, in his eyes, be unfairly used as a corrective measure to influence the path of a stone on the ice upon a thrower’s initial release.

By rule, as clarified mid-Olympics by World Curling on Feb. 14, players can retouch the handle of a stone as many times as they want prior to the hog line — the boundary before which the thrower must release the stone for it to be considered in play — but touching the handle after the hog line isn’t allowed and should result in the stone being removed from play. A stone should also be removed from play if a player touches the granite of the stone during forward motion.

World Curling introduced electronic handles on the stones at this year's Games. Triggered by a touch sensor, as well as a magnetic strip in the ice, they were designed to flash red if players were still touching the handle after the hog line.

Touching the granite beyond the hog line, though, wouldn’t activate that mechanism.

Brad Jacobs, the Canadian skip on Kennedy’s team that won Olympic gold, is frustrated, too, but that frustration is directed toward the Swedes.

“Something needs to happen here,” Jacobs said this week, per The Athletic. “There needs to be accountability. Everything that happened at the Olympics with this controversy was not handled properly, starting from the top down.”

As for the Swedish team specifically, Jacobs reportedly told The Athletic, “They’re nothing to me.”

“It’s quite simple, I act like they don’t exist. I’m very unhappy with all of their actions and things they’ve done recently.”

That said, while Canada was at the top of the podium in this year’s Games, Sweden won gold in the World Curling Championship. Team Edin, which is skipped by Niklas Edin and also includes Eriksson among the quartet, defeated a Canadian squad skipped by Matt Dunstone in the final.

Before that, Team Dunstone beat Team Jacobs in the the Canadian national championship, denying Team Jacobs a spot in the world championships.

The rivalry could be a good thing for curling. Some bad blood can go a long way in terms of a sport’s popularity.

Especially one like curling that’s struggled to stay in the Zeitgeist outside the Olympic window.