A cheating claim violated the 'spirit of curling' at the Olympics. The sport is moving on

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The stone had barely settled when the storm broke. A single illegal double-touch by Canada’s Marc Kennedy—his finger grazing the granite again after release—sent Sweden’s camp into protest, ignited social media and forced curling’s custodians to confront a 500-year-old question: can the sport’s cherished “spirit” survive the glare of the five-ring circus?

The sequence was swift but seismic. Kennedy’s hog-line violation, undetected by officials but visible to broadcast cameras, triggered Swedish objections and a brief experiment with on-ice line judges. Within 48 hours the traditional self-policing ethos was restored, yet the reverberations lingered through the Cortina Curling Center.

“We’re trying to spread the word about our culture, and our culture is one based on integrity, and honor, and friendship,” World Curling President Beau Welling told The Associated Press. “Obviously, this has been tested a little bit this week. But, fundamentally, that’s who we are.”

Canadian curler Ben Hebert, whose rink has absorbed both criticism and jokes, offered a blunter timeline: “It’ll be over in two weeks and everyone will go back to covering curling in four years.”

The incident exposed a widening fault line between curling’s genteel past and its Olympic present. No video-replay protocol exists, leaving rulings to players’ conscience and opponents’ vigilance. Canada Curling CEO Nolan Thiessen argued the sport must professionalize, embracing objective officiating like global counterparts. “We probably need to get there,” Thiessen said, “as opposed to, ‘I think you did this’ and ‘Well, I don’t think I did.’”

Sweden’s Niklas Edin, whose defending champion men’s team was eliminated Tuesday after a 1-6 round-robin slide, conceded the week felt “horrible” and wished the dispute had been “dealt with differently.”

Players on both sides insist friendships remain intact—Sweden’s Sara McManus and Canada’s Emma Miskew exchanged a cordial handshake in the women’s draw—but acknowledge medals now outweigh manners. “That’s where I think the spirit of curling is in a little bit of trouble,” Kennedy admitted, “and honestly that’s probably come from the quest for medals.”

As semifinals approach, officials have retreated to the sidelines, trusting competitors to police themselves. Whether that trust survives the next razor-thin infraction could shape curling’s trajectory toward fuller professionalism—or tether it to tradition.