Canada's curling skip tells cheating accusers to get Olympic celebration 'burned into your brain'

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — The gold medal sealed. The accusations of cheating of overcome. It was time for Marc Kennedy to let loose.

So the curler at the center of one of the biggest scandals that the sport has ever experienced leapt atop the boards lining the ice sheets and pumped his right fist as a wide smile flashed across his 44-year-old face.

Kennedy and his Canadian teammates brushed aside controversy and beat Britain for Olympic gold on Saturday at the Milan Cortina Games.

“It means the world to me to see my teammates with a medal around their neck,” Kennedy said. “I don’t know if people will ever understand what we went through this week as a team — what I put them through this week as a team."

Brad Jacobs’ team defeated Bruce Mouat’s all-Scottish squad 9-6 inside Cortina’s historic ice arena after a trying two weeks for the sport's powerhouse.

“When some things went down this week and people were using some pretty outrageous words like ‘cheating’ associated now with our team," Jacobs said, “I’ll guarantee you that that only motivated us further.”

Kennedy's profanity-laced rant got attention far beyond the ice when several players were accused of double-touching the rock, a rules violation.

The sport was sent into turmoil during the round-robin phase when Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Kennedy, Canada's vice skip, of touching the rock again after initially releasing it down the sheet of ice. Kennedy responded with an outburst full of expletives.

“I let my emotions get the best of me,” Kennedy said. “I stood up for my teammates. I’ll never back down from that. We moved on, we moved forward and we did something amazing and a weaker team would have fell flat on their face.”

It’s Canada’s first gold in men’s curling since the 2014 Sochi Games, when they also beat Britain in the final with Jacobs as the skip. This is his first Olympics since — he lost in the Canadian Olympic trials for 2018 and 2022.

“For anyone who called us cheaters, for anyone who said negative things about Marc Kennedy, about us, about Canada, about our families,” Jacobs said, “I hope that the image of us standing on top of the podium, embracing one another, smiling ear to ear with our gold medals is burned into your brain forever.”

With its women's team having won bronze earlier, it was Canada’s seventh gold and 14th medal overall in Olympic curling — tops in both categories.

Kennedy was also on the Canada team that won gold 16 years ago on home ice in Vancouver.

“He’s an animal to be able to accomplish all that he has and to still do that today at 44,” said Tyler Tardi, the team’s alternate who roomed with Kennedy. “He’s been one of the best players in the world for, gosh, 20 years. So he just knows everything, knows how to deal with it all, and hats off to him.”

The British men have still not won Olympic gold since the inaugural Winter Games in 1924 in Chamonix.

Mouat was off on the freeze and Canada chipped Britain out of the house for three in the ninth end.

Canada’s team also featured Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert.

Switzerland defeated Norway for bronze on Friday.

Double-touching debate

Several other accusations of double-touching followed Kennedy's outburst, and Canada lost its next match against Switzerland before steadying itself to go all the way.

In response, curling’s higher-ups first stationed umpires at the hog line to check for future fouls, but then reverted to the traditional practice of players policing themselves.

“This is a brand new rule that apparently was put in very recently that I think World Curling really does need to do a deep dive on and take a look at,” Jacobs said. “It didn’t seem like they were prepared for what went down. ... It was a little bit of a mess.

“So hopefully us as players can maybe get a little more involved and help them figure out the best thing moving forward for the sport so that this type of nonsense doesn’t happen again.”

Canadian women take bronze

Top-ranked Canada beat the United States for bronze in the women’s competition earlier Saturday after being upset by Sweden in the semifinals.

Rachel Homan’s team won 10-7 to deny the American women their first medal in the event.

The Canadians had to overcome a 1-3 start to round-robin play.

“I’m really proud of our week and our fight,” Homan said. “We were never giving up right to the end, pulling for each other and when things were hard we just pulled closer together and tried to figure out how to make the next one.”

Sweden will play Switzerland for gold on Sunday.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics