Well hell’s bells, who knew the ice could get so hot? The Olympic curling community is still all in a twist about everything that’s gone on in the sport since a row broke out between the Sweden and Canada sides on Friday. “The whole spirit of curling is dead,” Canada’s Marc Kennedy said on Monday night after his team’s 8-2 victory against Czech Republic, which felt like a bold take coming from the man who started this entire farrago by repeatedly telling his Swedish opponent Oskar Eriksson to “fuck off” after Eriksson accused him of making an illegal double‑touch.
On Tuesday, the Canadians were outplaying the British. They beat them handily, 9-5, which means Bruce Mouat’s team have to beat the USA team and hope other results go their way if they’re going to make the semi-finals.
The way the Canadians play it, curling is a sport where a competitor is supposed to take his opponent’s word. “This whole trying to catch people in the act of an infraction sucks,” Kennedy said on Monday. “We don’t look for infractions at grand slams. We don’t look for that kind of stuff on tour. We just trust that the people around us aren’t trying to cheat. If somebody does something out of hand, it just gets dealt with in the moment, and you move on, you don’t need the officials to manage our game. That’s where the spirit of curling is in a little bit of trouble, and, honestly, that’s probably come from the quest for medals.”
And how. The row has turned out to be the biggest thing to happen to it since it was brought back into the Olympic programme in 1998. The slow-motion footage of Kennedy brushing the stone with his forefinger has gone viral, and the internet is overflowing with sloppy AI skits of Kennedy nudging ice hockey pucks and knocking over figure skaters at the ice rink. On TikTok someone put together a spoof of Kennedy and Eriksson in a whole Heated Rivalry situation, which has pulled in 2.5 million views. It’s fair to say the organisers were caught short by the speed and size of the reaction.
But honey, our relationship is based on trust, and you’re destroying that trust when you deliberately catches me cheating on you
wtf?!?
The slow-motion footage of Kennedy brushing the stone with his forefinger has gone viral, and the internet is overflowing with sloppy AI skits of Kennedy nudging ice hockey pucks and knocking over figure skaters at the ice rink. On TikTok someone put together a spoof of Kennedy and Eriksson in a whole Heated Rivalry situation, which has pulled in 2.5 million views.
It’s not a “spoof,” it’s a scam. It’s clickbait to farm attention because the uploader knows a bunch of numb scrollers will think it’s real, tap, and that the Tiktok algo will exploit that with no correction.
“What does the world feed off nowadays? Negativity. But that’s OK. Like I said, all of that negativity brought a lot of eyeballs to the sport of curling that maybe have never even considered looking at it before.”
I appreciate the positivity, but this is not okay. Nothing about the internet is okay. I was once a free internet absolutist, even with regard to Big Tech, but at some point it crossed over into being, mostly, genuinely decietful slop like this, even before accessible AI made things worse.
What a fucking whiny loser. Gets caught cheating and starts crying about how curling is based on trust probably because he exploited that trust to get to the olympics in the first place.
Send him home. Even if it costs the team any medals they have a chance at, better to shut that shit down hard than stand by it to get medals that will be tainted by the whole thing anyways.
Glad I already dgaf about curling or the olympics, otherwise I’d be concerned that remarks like that might make people think that curling should just be a casual backyard sport that doesn’t belong in the Olympics if “trusting your opponents” is more important than “following the rules”.
What a dumb fucker. Hope he doesn’t have a lot of other trash like him to rally around his worthless take.
Why does he keep talking after getting caught in 4k. I’d be swimming to the bottom of the ocean from shame.
So, operating in a sport using gentleman’s rules is great. It’s wonderful when people are honest and courteous on the pitch/ice/field. The problem is that it works both ways.
Canada’s player did break the rules. I don’t know enough about Curling to say if it was a game changing infraction, but he did it at least once. Why he can’t say “I messed up in the moment, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again”. Apparently attacking the other players, the officials, and the public is the better response.
Why hasn’t his own coach suspended him? If this is a game of courtesy and trust then wouldn’t the team take care of it internally? It’s not the important, I guess.
To sum up: we end up with cameras, judges and replays when we can’t trust the players to be honest. So far the Canadian team and the single finger infraction aren’t demonstrating the kind of gentleman’s honor needed to preserve the type of environment they begrudge losing.
I’m astounded that a sport made it to the Olympic level without having more stringent observation in place. I used to play Ultimate (frisbee), and regular league play at the college level didn’t have refs. Teams called their own fouls and such and for the most part it worked pretty well. I dunno if things have changed in the past few decades and refs are standard for all games now, but even back then once you were at the regional or national tournament level they had refs (called observers I believe) to make decisions if calls were contested.
If olympic curling had nothing like that my mind is literally blown
To sum up: we end up with cameras, judges and replays when we can’t trust the players to be honest. So far the Canadian team and the single finger infraction aren’t demonstrating the kind of gentleman’s honor needed to preserve the type of environment they begrudge losing.
“You should trust in honesty” cried the liar.
I find myself saying this a lot recently, but maybe I just started noticing it more: it often takes a few to ruin it for everyone — bad apples spoiling the bunch. Trust is a fragile thing and now everyone’s looking around wondering who else might have broken it.
Maybe the others can rise above it and continue to be gentlemen with each other, but that player and that team aren’t gonna shake the suspicion.
Yeah he’s a disgrace to Canada.
I stopped watching when they disqualified Vladislav Heraskevych.
The Olympics is a joke. A massive event of corruption stealing taxpayer money, running entirely of bribery and cronyism.
In case anyone is wondering, this is indeed referring to the guy that was disqualified for wearing a helmet honoring other athletes that died in the war
Oh no! Not CURLING!
Curling is actually fantastic
It’s basically lawn bowling on ice. Fun, a great way to get drunk, but these are not athletes and this is not a sport.
ok
