Curling, the Olympic sport as hypnotic as it is impenetrable, is built on a foundation of etiquette that those in the sport have an actual name for: the Spirit of Curling.
The Spirit of Curling has curdled today, as the sport seems to be having an embarrassing public meltdown at the 2026 Winter Olympics. At the center of it is an accusation that sounds like nothing but has escalated into a full-blown controversy. And it all has to do with double-touching the stone.
During a round-robin match, Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian curler Marc Kennedy of illegally touching the granite rock after releasing it, beyond the hog line. Yes, curling has something called a hog line. It’s very funny, but we’ll laugh about it later. All you have to know is that players must let go of the stone before it crosses the hog line.
It’s going to be so difficult not to laugh at that.
Canadian curler Marc Kennedy was accused of “double-touching” – touching the stone a second time after initially releasing it down the ice. The next day, Canadian women’s captain Rachel Holman was accused of using the same move. Both have denied the accusations. #Curling #WinterGames #Canada #MarcKennedy #BBCNews
Even Curling Isn’t Immune to Olympic Cheating Scandals
If a player touches the stone again while it’s in forward motion before it crosses the hog line, that stone is supposed to be removed from play. Kennedy denied the claim and, in a hot mic moment, told Eriksson to “f—k off.” Canada went on to win that match 8-6.
A video making the rounds showed the alleged infraction. Officials on the ice say they hadn’t seen it clearly enough to call it in real time. World Curling, the sports governing body, stepped in by releasing a statement, saying that “during forward motion, touching the granite of the stone is not allowed.”
They declined to use video replay to review past calls but said umpires would more closely observe deliveries moving forward.
So sad to see the video of Canadian Olympian Marc Kennedy who got caught cheating for Team Canada in curling today. He was confronted by the Swedish team and reacted with a disservice to Canada. pic.twitter.com/BYKjVv2xsv
— John Tomkinson (@johnwtomkinson) February 14, 2026
Kennedy has received a verbal warning for his rough language. That should be the end of it, but the story has taken on a life of its own and gotten much more dramatic since.
Canadian women’s skip Rachel Homan had a stone removed for the same violation in a match against Switzerland, and the same thing happened to Britain’s Bobby Lammie. What began as a minor spat about rule interpretation has blown up into a multinational, tournament-wide debate about the sport’s integrity. The Spirit of Curling itself is now the center of the controversy.
All of this comes as the historically dominant Canadian squad is struggling with consistency on the men’s side, and the women’s team can’t afford any more losses. The added pressure from all of this compounds the anxieties all these Canadian curlers must be experiencing.
For a sport that prides itself on an almost cartoonish yet mostly well-exemplified sense of dignity and respect, the noise of this controversy has been tough for it to ignore. There are Olympic medals on the line, and now every stone thrown slid past the hog line will be more scrutinized than usual.
Okay. Feel free to laugh at hog line now. By the way, the technology used in curling to electronically detect hog line violations is called Eye on the Hog. I think I just peed myself laughing.
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