Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | February 19, 2026
The 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina have brought with it a cavalcade of ever-so-fabulous drama. We’ve had figure skating shocks, skiing stumbles, and new world records in sports so inexplicable that you wonder if they were created in a game of chicken. How does one decide to dedicate their lives to flying down a murderous ice circuit on a tea tray? How transferrable are the skills acquired in ski jumping? Will the Jamaican bobsled team ever reign victorious? It’s been a season of speculation, as you can imagine. But if you want the real drama, you have to go to the curling rink. That’s right: this slow, methodical, and ‘boring’ sport has become the epicentre of all the weirdest and most high-low stakes battles of the Winter Olympics.
For those who don’t know: curling is a sport where players slide stones on a sheet of ice towards a target, and whoever is closest to the centre is the winner. It’s like bowling but smoother and with brooms, where players can sweep the surface to try and reduce friction and create a smoother path to the target. Curling has been around for hundreds of years, originating in Scotland in the early 1500s (Scotland is also the only place in the world where you can get the specific kind of granite used to make the stones, making them very expensive. Seriously, though, Scottish people do love curling. It’s a sport we’re actually good at, which we can’t say about many things.) While curling doesn’t seem as outwardly exciting as the luge or speed skating, it’s a deceptively gripping sport with devoted fans and its own culture of good sportsmanship. Players are expected to be polite, call out their own fouls, and not engage in petty back-and-forths with their opponents. Well, that’s not exactly the case right now.
The Canadian men’s team faced pushback during their match with Sweden. Marc Kennedy got into a swearing match with Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson, which quickly went viral. Eriksson accused Kennedy of double-touching some of hiis stones, essentially pushing them forward after letting go of the handle. It’s against the rules, but this is a self-governed sport and both teams had agreed that whatever the end result was would stand. And Canada won. Kennedy was sanctioned for swearing but that didn’t stop the drama. As reported by the BBC, “Eriksson had told his opponent during the row that “I’ll show you the video after” and, sure enough, footage found its way into circulation post-match […] The word from Canada was that it was pre-meditated. A set-up. That the Swedes had deployed someone to try to catch them out in a game that is founded in trust and respect.”
CURLING BEEF! CURLING BEEF! CURLING BEEF! CURLING BEEF! (I never post Olympic videos bc the IOC will hunt you down but I am taking that risk so that you can hear the Canadian curling cursing)
— Rodger Sherman (@rodger.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 9:44 PM
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Apparently, Canada’s curling team has earned a bit of a reputation in the sport for double-touching. The country is dominant in the sport, but Kennedy’s outburst and these accusations of cheating have put a bit of a damper on their Olympics run. As well as being just unsportsmanlike and deeply against curling culture to swear at your opponent, the alleged double-touching is flat-out rule breaking in a sport where agreeing to call out your own errors is a big part of the deal. But it’s also a sign that so-called gentlemanly rule is not in play when teams are allegedly recording one another in the hopes of catching a possible error.
The story took another turn when the Canadians returned to the ice to play Switzerland, and their opponents also reported an incident of double-touching to the umpire. Again, no action was taken, and Canada won. Eventually, World Curling announced that they would deploy extra officials for the remainder of the Games to check for double-touching. One player caught out after this was the captain of Canada’s women’s team. But the players said this was unfair and dinged them for accidents rather than deliberate manipulation, so World Curling changed their protocol again. Some players are calling for the curling equivalent of VAR cameras to be implemented, while others have suggested some kind of sensors being placed on the stones. Whatever the case, it’s cast a shadow over one of the least drama-prone sports in the Winter Olympics. No d**k enlargement schemes here, as far as I know!
The Olympics is a non-paying event of national pride where people spend years of their lives striving to become the best at something utterly random in the name of sheer glory. Maybe you’ll get a cereal sponsorship out of it or a chance to teach Snoop Dogg how to skate, but largely, this is about sportsmanship and a spirit of achievement. Of course, that’s not how it plays out in reality. The Olympics is a hive of corruption, racism, transphobia, doping, and corporate greed. It’s a space where teenage girls are forced onto the world stage to perform astonishing feats then laughed at when they fall. Even curling can become illicit in this space, creating villains and scheming that feel like something from a soap opera. Something as seemingly anodyne as double-touching, with many players claim doesn’t even offer a player advantage, is as shocking as a stumble down a mountain.
Canada is still the favourite to win the men’s curling gold, but their route to victory is now accompanied by the air of suspicion. Curling is now dramatic to the rest of the world well beyond its devotees. Maybe we’ll get a juicy movie out of it in the future, or the curling version of Heated Rivalry. Hey, if any sport is ripe for a romantic reinvention, it’s one where ‘double-touching’ is a thing.
