Canadian men’s curling team wins gold medal after being embroiled in cheating controversy

The Canadian men beat Britain for gold in Olympic curling Saturday 9-6 after brushing aside accusations of cheating during the round-robin phase at the Milan Cortina Games.

The chaos began Feb. 13, when Canada beat Sweden 8-6, and Canadian third Marc Kennedy and Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson got into it. 

Eriksson had accused Kennedy of an illegal procedure known as double-touching stones after releasing them at the hog line. Kennedy responded with expletives. 

Both sides appealed to officials, but no results were changed.

The next day, the Canadians accused the Swedes of improperly filming Kennedy’s delivery. Team Sweden denied any inappropriate filming, claiming the video came from the Swedish public broadcaster.

Members of Switzerland also accused the Canadians of double-touching, and similar accusations reached the women’s competition. (The Canadian women defeated the United States in the bronze medal game).

World Curling eventually concluded that “no violations were recorded” during the umpires’ observations that followed the claims.

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“Game umpires are situated at the end of each sheet and physically cannot see every delivery infraction,” World Curling said. “However, when they are made aware of delivery issues, game umpires are positioned to observe the delivery for three ends. 

“During this period of observation in the Friday evening game, there were no violations recorded,” the statement added, noting that video replay is not used during games and an umpire’s call is final.

Britain, though, was also accused of cheating. Britain was taking on Germany in round-robin play when officials said Scottish curler Bobby Lammie touched a stone after releasing it down the ice. Britain had a stone removed due to the double-touching but still ended up with a 9-4 win.

World Curling said, as a result of the accusations against Canada, it would designate two officials to move between the four curling matches during each round but noted it was “not possible” to have umpires stationed at each hog line, the line where stones must be released by hand.

It was Canada’s fourth gold in men’s curling and first since 2014, when it also beat Great Britain to cap off three straight Olympic golds. It’s heartbreak again for Great Britain, which settled for silver four years ago.

Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos, Jackson Thompson, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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