Photo: Andrew Milligan/PA Images/Getty Images

One of the most comforting things about watching sports is knowing that there are rules. Sure, caveats abound: Athletes and coaches will often try to evade those rules or rewrite them to their own benefit, and all rules come with their own institutional biases and blind spots. Sports are not the meritocracy its biggest boosters tell themselves it is; sports egalitarianism may be an aspiration, but it has never been a reality and it never will be. Sports are unfair just like life is.

But nevertheless, thereare rules. There is a field of play, with boundaries and end lines. There is an opponent, a goal, an achievable objective. There is a scoreboard, on which points are tallied, and when the game is completed, there is a winner and there is a loser. There is clarity of purpose and, perhaps most important, ultimateresolution: The game ends, and then we all go on to do something else. (Probably watch another game.)

TheOlympics are enjoyable for many reasons, but ostensibly, they’re supposed to be the platonic-ideal incarnation of sports as a force for unity in a world that discourages it. More often, though, the Olympics reflect not our world’s ideals but instead our true selves. And I’m not sure that’s ever been more plainly displayed than by the current curling scandal that has enveloped these Games, where we risk an international incident between Canada and Sweden … over curling.

To catch you up: In a preliminary match, a Canadian player named Marc Kennedy was accused by a Swedish opponent of “double-touching” the curling stone — essentially tapping it after it passes something called a “hog line,” allowing Kennedy to (theoretically) control where the stone goes past the line, in which it is explicitly banned. Kennedy responded to the accusatory Swede by telling him to “fuck off.” It’s awonderful video if you haven’t seen it; it’s like seeing a guy being cursed out byYouppi.

The notion of a curling scandal is, on its own, objectively amusing. As we all know by now, this is an extremely silly sport —it started with a bunch of Finnish monks scooting rocks across frozen ponds in the 16th century — and is mostly played in Nordic and Canadian bars. It involves brooms (or, in the modern era, Swiffers). The greatest and most famous curler of all time is a man named Kevin Martin,who looks like a cross between Ned Ryerson and Wallace Shawn. You have not thought about curling since the last Olympics four years ago and, in a week, you will not think about it again until 2030.

I could get into a long discussion and breakdown of the exact rule that was broken here and why it matters in the curling world, but I really don’t care and I suspect you don’t either. (If you really want an explainer,Barry Petchesky has an excellent one at Defector.) Whatmattersis that Kennedy, despite his protestations, clearly cheated, somethingthat has been captured on video. But there were zero ramifications. And what matters iswhythere were zero ramifications.

You see, the thing about curling is that there are no refs. Well, there are officials stationed nearby, but as explained by (outstanding) Olympics writer Rodger Sherman (whosefree newsletterSports! has been absolutely essential this Olympics fortnight), “Players can call over officials for disagreements or measurements, but they’re broadly expected to sort things out between themselves.” That is to say: Officials have no power. They are figureheads. They are not actual refs. Because curling is a bar sport, a Nordic and quite modest one, it has, throughout its history, been self-policed: Competitors are supposed to be polite and fair and take care of any disagreements among themselves. Over decades of competitive curling, this has never been a real problem. There have been no major curling controversies before — save for a tussle about “broom technology” about a decade ago,helpfully called “Broomgate” — because there was no possibility of major controversy. They just figured it out because they obeyed the rules.

This has changed only in the last year. China was involvedin a similar controversy at the World Championships. Now there is an Olympian one, which of course has gotten far more attention. And it, like the China one, is a veritable document of our times.

Not only did the Canadian team break the rules, but when Kennedy was called out for doing so, he:

(a) Told the person who called them out to “fuck off”
(b)Complained to reporters afterward that he “doesn’t like being called a cheater” (despite video evidence of him cheating)
(c) Got the national teamto put out a statement saying it was committed to “fair play”
(d) Blamed the Swedish teamfor trying to “trap” the Canadians
(e) Denied the infraction happened entirely, saying there was a “zero percent chance,” despite, again, full video evidence that we can all see with our own eyes.

Oh, and the next day, a player on the women’s team cheated in exactly the same way(and once again, there was video evidence).

And these people are all Canadians!

The reason these curlers have flouted decorum is, simply, that they can. There are no (real) officials. There is no governing board that can make a ruling one way or another. (The only response World Curling mustered for last year’s fracas was to appointfewerrefs.) There are no punishments forthcoming. As long as you are willing to deal with the shame of actively lying and giving no quarter, despite mountains of evidence that you are lying, you can do whatever you want, all the way to a possible gold medal.

People hate referees the way they hate the media. They constantly believe refs are cheating them, are biased against them, are actively trying to make them lose. But we have seen, now, in curling, what happens when there are no refs and when a culture of shamelessness reigns.

The curling world existed just fine under the existing structure for centuries. Over the last year, that has changed, probably forever. You tell me what you think may have changed in the global consciousness about rules, impartial observers, shame, and power in that time. Curling once had its own calm, cordial ecosystem in which its citizens could peacefully coexist and compete. It has now twisted itself into a world that looks, well, just like ours. Were they around to see it, those Scottish monks would have plunged through the ice and drowned themselves in shame. The rest of us, alas, have to still live here.

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• games
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• 2026 winter olympics
• curling
• marc kennedy
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