CORTINA D’AMPEZZO – Both sides in the Canada-Sweden curling melodrama held firm to their beliefs Saturday at Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.
It was a story so engulfing that it essentially left Brad Jacobs’ first defeat of the Winter Games lost in the shuffle.
Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller defeated Canada 9-5 in a clinical victory over a Calgary-based side that may have been distracted by the tumult from a night earlier.
The vice-skips at the heart of the tension — Canada’s Marc Kennedy and Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson — stuck to their guns a day after an on-ice discussion about ‘double-touching’ curling stones evolved into a profanity-laced interaction that generated international headlines.
“I don’t regret defending myself or my teammates in that moment,” Kennedy said. “I just probably regret the language I used.”
Late in the Canada-Sweden game, Eriksson — the third for skip Niklas Edin — told Kennedy he thought the Canadian players had occasionally touched the granite on the stone after the rock handle was released.
Kennedy bristled at the suggestion that there was deliberate cheating and let Eriksson know it, adding a couple of F-bombs for good measure.
“I’ve played this game a really long time, and I can’t think of once in my entire career where I’ve done something to gain a competitive advantage by cheating, and I take that very seriously,” Kennedy said. “And it’s been a really long career.
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“So when you get called out, my instinct was to be a little bit of a bulldog and come after Oskar for it. That’s human nature for me.”
The incident kick-started an online wave of accusations, fuelled in part by a viral video that appeared to show Kennedy’s finger grazing the granite, which would be a rule violation.
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The source of the video — apparently filmed a few rows above ice level near the hog line — wasn’t immediately clear.
“I was surprised that there was a live video on the hog line outside of OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Service) rules,” said Curling Canada CEO Nolan Thiessen. “That seems odd to me.”
Canada team coach Paul Webster went one step further. He said there were Swedish support staff, fans and team officials in position there during the game.
“They were there ready at the hog line video recording,” he said.
Kennedy added he felt the Swedes had “come up with a plan” to try to catch violations at that location.
“It was planned right from the word go yesterday,” he said. “From the words that were being said by their coaches and the way they were running to the officials. It was kind of evident that something was going on, and they were trying to catch us in an act.”
Edin was asked directly if the Swedish team made arrangements to have that part of the sheet recorded.
“Absolutely not,” he said, adding the recording was from a “media crew” that wanted to explain to its viewers what was happening.
“It was Swedish media, the people covering the game that did,” he said. “That’s what we were told at least.”
In a statement, World Curling said its umpires monitored the hog line area during the game and found no violations. If the granite had been touched, the stone would be removed from play.
Kennedy also listed a few concerns the Canadians had during the game, but said they let them go. He said Eriksson was “moving around at the hog line” while he was trying to throw, and also ran across the sheet when Canada lead Ben Hebert was throwing a rock.
“The difference is we don’t call him out on it because we know that he’s not doing it intentionally to cheat,” Kennedy said. “You play against these guys for so long, there’s a little bit of give-and-take, and you try to let the officials call the game.”
An ideal follow-through after a stone’s release would see the curler keep their hand in the air, Webster said. That position would also eliminate the chance of a lowered finger grazing the granite.
“I’m not going to sit here and adamantly deny that I haven’t done it,” Kennedy said. “I can just adamantly deny that it was (ever) done on purpose.”
Sweden (1-3) recorded its first win of the competition Saturday, while Switzerland improved to 4-0. Swiss fourth Benoit Schwarz-van Berkel led the way by shooting a game-high 97 per cent.
The Canadians, who fell into a second-place with Great Britain’s Bruce Mouat at 3-1, return to action Sunday night against China’s Xiaoming Xu.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
