Team Canada poses with the gold medals of the men's curling, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21. AP-Yonhap
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — The gold medal sealed. The accusations of cheating overcome. It was time for Marc Kennedy to let loose.
So the curler at the center of one of the biggest scandals that the sport has ever experienced leapt atop the boards lining the ice sheets and pumped his right fist as a wide smile flashed across his 44-year-old face.
Kennedy and his Canadian teammates brushed aside controversy and beat Britain for Olympic gold on Saturday at the Milan Cortina Games .
“It means the world to me to see my teammates with a medal around their neck,” Kennedy said. “I don’t know if people will ever understand what we went through this week as a team — what I put them through this week as a team."
Brad Jacobs’ team defeated Bruce Mouat’s all-Scottish squad 9-6 inside Cortina’s historic ice arena after a trying two weeks for the sport's powerhouse.
“When some things went down this week and people were using some pretty outrageous words like ‘cheating’ associated now with our team," Jacobs said, “I’ll guarantee you that that only motivated us further.”
Kennedy's profanity-laced rant got attention far beyond the ice when several players were accused of double-touching the rock, a rules violation.
The sport was sent into turmoil during the round-robin phase when Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Kennedy, Canada's vice skip, of touching the rock again after initially releasing it down the sheet of ice. Kennedy responded with an outburst full of expletives.
“I let my emotions get the best of me,” Kennedy said. “I stood up for my teammates. I’ll never back down from that. We moved on, we moved forward and we did something amazing and a weaker team would have fell flat on their face.”
Source: Korea Times News
