CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The Canadian curler at the center of a growing controversy at the Winter Olympics insisted Saturday that he is not cheating and said his team may have been the target of a “premeditated” attack by Sweden, one of its biggest rivals for the gold medal.
Mark Kennedy admitted he “probably could have handled it better” after launching into an expletive-laden rant toward Swedish curler Oskar Eriksson during Canada’s 8-6 win in round-robin play late Friday night, who accused him of breaking the rules by “double-touching” — essentially, touching the rock again after initially leaving it under a sheet of snow.
However, Kennedy, 44, said he does not knowingly go on the ice “with the intention of obtaining advantage through fraud” – and never has.
Footage circulated online showed Kennedy touching the granite stone with his outstretched finger after he had already released it, in violation of curling rules. Asked about the footage, Kennedy said, “Yeah, I’m not even going there. I never thought it was a concern before. It never came up in conversation.”
“And if someone says to you, ‘Hey, do you double touch all the time?’ “Honestly, in that little second of a moment, I couldn’t even tell you whether I did or not,” he said.
He added his own theory, suggesting that the whole thing may have been a “premeditated plan to try to catch us”.
“They’ve come up with a plan to catch the teams in action,” Kennedy said.
The saga has rocked the usually quiet world of curling and involves two teams that play each other regularly outside the Olympics and have some of the best players in the game.
In another twist on Saturday, the Canadian women’s team was charged with the same double-touch violation by match officials, this time by veteran skip Rachel Homan in the first end against Switzerland. The Canadian curlers looked incredulous and angry.
“Zero percent chance,” Homan said before the match continued.
A day after the heated altercation with the Swedish team, Kennedy received a verbal warning from world curling’s governing body. He has not been formally accused of cheating by World Curling, which does not use video to review game play.
The organization opted to deploy two officials to monitor how players released their stones during Saturday’s afternoon session in the men’s competition. That season, Canada lost to Switzerland 9–5 and Sweden defeated China 6–4.
Later, in reference to Kennedy, Erickson said that he “slept well, I’m not sure about that” – and said that he chose that moment to highlight Kennedy’s alleged rule-breaking because he had seen it happen in the past. Erickson said he has told authorities at the last two events.
“We want to play fair, like you play by the rules,” Ericsson said. “And if we see something that’s not following the rules, we tell the protesters or the official. This time we did both.”
Allegations continued.
Swiss coach Glenn Howard said that during their game against Canada, the Swiss men’s team alerted the umpires midway through the match over suspicions that a member of the Canadian team was again double-tapping.
Howard is Canadian, and a well-known and highly acclaimed curler himself.
“Throughout my career, if there was a little infraction, you’d say, ‘Ah, it’s OK,'” Howard said, adding that he didn’t know what to make of this latest flare-up.
At the end of Friday’s match, Sweden’s skip Niklas Edin informed the officials of his complaints about Kennedy. World Curling said Saturday that an official remained on the hog line — the thick green line before which curlers must release a stone — for three ends of the day to monitor Canadian curlers and that no violations were recorded.
Online footage showed Kennedy tapping the stone twice, leading some curling fans to question how the video was taken and pointing out that cameras are not typically deployed on the hog line.
An employee of Swedish public broadcaster SVT said that the channel had obtained the footage because it had taken its camera to the hog line after Sweden raised concerns about double-tapping at the start of the match. The camera operator stayed put until he was able to capture Kennedy’s pitch in the eighth end. Ericsson said Swedish TV had shown him the footage.
