Sports
Olympic curling scandal threatens to forever alter the sport’s culture of trust
MILAN — Cheating has been part of the Olympics since the ancient games, when violators were punished with fines, public flogging or lifetime bans.
The Milan-Cortina Games have hardly been an exception, although there have been no reports of public flogging.
These Olympics started with controversy when a report in the German newspaper Bild alleged ski jumpers were injecting hyaluronic acid into their penises in an effort to fly further. Then came a different kind of cheating when medal-winning Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid confessed to infidelity in a TV interview.
Both scandals drew attention even if most people already knew that all is not fair in love and soar.
But those paled in comparison to the outcry that erupted when some curlers — Canadian curlers — were accused of bending the rules. That was held up as a great breach of etiquette, instigating calls for additional officials and even video reviews in a sport where competitors have traditionally called their own fouls.
“Curling has historically operated on a culture of trust and self-regulation,” said Heather Mair, chair of recreation and leisure studies at the University of Waterloo and an expert on the social aspects of curling. “At most levels, players call their own infractions. They compete against people they know well, often in relatively small circuits, and they see each other repeatedly over the course of a season.
“That relational fabric has long been part of the sport’s informal governance.”
But when the sport returned to Olympic competition in 1998 after a 74-year break, that began to change. Suddenly, national pride, medals and funding were at stake. And after the Milan-Cortina Games ends, a well-funded professional league, the Rock League, will launch with six teams, further accelerating the sport’s evolution from hobby to profession.
“The whole context of the Olympics is the story here,” Mair said.
“What we’re seeing in curling is this kind of dramatic, heart-wrenching conversation within the sport about cheating and honesty and all this kind of stuff. Did that happen before in this case with the ski jumping? Was there this heart-wrenching conversation about cheating?”
Canada’s (from left) Brett Gallant, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert compete against the China at the Winter Olympics on Sunday.
(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)
To review, the Canadian men’s and women’s teams were accused of double touching the stone during release. The rules state a player may retouch the handle as many times as they wish when delivering a stone — as long as they do so before the hog line, the thick stripe that marks the end of the release zone. Touching the handle after the hog line is not allowed.
So when did Canada’s Marc Kennedy and Rachel Homan last touch their stones?
During Canada’s win over Sweden on Friday, the Swedes taped Kennedy’s release and the video showed him touching the stone with his index finger after releasing the handle. Kennedy, who was mic-d up, responded to Sweden’s allegations by swearing, which is also a break from curling culture.
A day later, World Curling, the governing body for the sport, deployed additional officials to monitor the hog line, and Homan had a stone disqualified in Canada’s loss to Switzerland when it was determined she touched it twice.
“This feels like a new era of surveillance for the sport,” Mair said. “I just don’t know how else we manage it.”
Modern stones have hog-line sensors built into the handles, so they reliably detect late release of the handle. But they don’t detect a brief touch on the granite itself. And without an umpire watching closely — or without video evidence — that kind of infraction can be difficult to spot.
“Despicable,” Canadian men’s skip Brad Jacobs said of the additional scrutiny. “As Canadian curlers, we were targeted. And to go out and pull her rock like that, I think it was a tragedy.”
Canada’s Rachel Homan competes against China at the Milan-Cortina Games on Monday.
(Fatima Shbair / Associated Press)
Canadian coach Paul Jacobs took a more nuanced approach, conceding there’s a problem but disagreeing with the solution.
“If you listen to what Sweden said, and I think they’re right, this has been a problem that they’ve tried to identify to our international federation. And it wasn’t acted on,” Jacobs said. “Now we’re trying to quickly fix things at an Olympics, and I think it’s the wrong thing to do.
“A double-touch stone, or whatever it is, none of these officials have ever gone through any of their courses. We have untrained people doing things they’ve never done before. And we’re not at some bonspiel in Saskatchewan just trying things out. We’re at the Olympics.”
For Mair, the lament is that the very public controversy playing out on that Olympic stage will force changes at the top level of the sport that will trickle down to the grassroots. And what will be lost when that happens will alter curling forever.
“Once they start messing around with this trust, I think we’re on a pretty sad path,” Mair said. “This feels so ugly. But the value of these Olympic medals are such that, I guess this stuff can be sacrificed.”
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Toronto Maple Leafs No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has already been on the ice with the team as it held its development camp this week, but the highly-touted rookie is going to have to make a big change for this fall.
His number.
When he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers and then again at Penn State this past season, McKenna wore the No. 72.
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Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna has revealed that he’ll be opting for a new number for his rookie campaign. (Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
The expectation was that McKenna would wear No. 72 with the Maple Leafs, and he did so this week at development camp. Plenty of fans have also already ordered No. 72 jerseys with his name on the back.
On most rosters, No. 72 is unique enough that he wouldn’t run into any issues wearing it. However, on July 1, the Leafs signed two-time Stanley Cup champion goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has worn No. 72 for most of his career, except during his first two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, when he wore No. 35.
So, some were wondering how this would work out. Would the Leafs want their new franchise player to get his pick of the number litter, or would they defer to a two-time Vezina winner?
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Gavin McKenna wore No. 72 in juniors, as well as last season at Penn State. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Well, it turns out that McKenna will be the one swapping numbers, and he’ll be switching to No. 92 this season.
McKenna had to get creative here because the obvious number changes were a no-go in Toronto. Adding 7 and 2 would be 9, but that was retired in honor of Charlie Conacher and Ted Kennedy.
Another option would’ve been to flip the digits and go with No. 27, but that was retired in honor of Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler.
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So, 92 it is.
However, McKenna reached out to one of the three previous players to wear the number, Jeff O’Neill, to ask whether he was comfortable with him using it.
It’s fair to say he was down with the idea.
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McKenna will be a key piece of a Maple Leafs team that is looking to bounce back after a nightmare 2025-26 campaign that saw them finish last in the Atlantic Division.
It’ll be the culmination of nine minor-league seasons. But Eliezer Alfonzo‘s major-league debut on Sunday won’t include his family watching from Dodger Stadium.
Alfonzo’s younger sister, Eliana, and stepmother, Patricia, have been missing since last month when earthquakes caused widespread devastation in his home country of Venezuela.
“I’ve been trying to support my dad a lot, every day talking to him, trying to be with him,” Alfonzo said of the elder Eliezer Alfonzo, a retired major-league catcher. “It’s a little tough from here because I would like to be there with him, supporting him every day.”
His father, of course, would love to be in attendance for his son’s debut. He told him as much when he heard the Dodgers were calling him up.
The Dodgers switched their backup catchers Saturday, optioning Chuckie Robinson. They saw an opportunity to give Alfonzo some runway behind Dalton Rushing, with starting catcher Will Smith’s stay on the injured list expected to extend through the All-Star break.
The elder Eliezer Alfonzo, however, is doing whatever he can to locate his wife and daughter. Their dog was found alive, which gave the younger Eliezer Alfonzo hope.
“We’ve just gotta stay together as a family, as a country,” Alfonzo said. “Because I feel like we’re a beautiful country, we’re a really beautiful people over there. It’s not just about my family, it’s all families that have lost people already. But we’ve got hope. We just pray, we ask God to give them back to us alive.”
Alfonzo’s locker in the clubhouse is next to countryman Miguel Rojas’ stall. Rojas’ wife, Mariana, and their two children were in Venezuela, planning to renew Mariana’s passport and seek Venezuelan citizenship for their children, when the earthquakes hit. They managed to stay safe and have returned to the U.S.
“I just want to be here for him,” Rojas said. “At the end of the day, that’s the best thing I can do for him, is being a good teammate and being a friend for him. Because I know there’s going to be ups and downs. He’s going to have a lot of time to be caught [up] in baseball, and that’s going to probably take his mind away from stuff. But sometimes he’s probably going to feel weak, and he’s going to start thinking about his family. So I’m going to be here, I’m right next to him. And that’s what I told him.”
Rojas, who played against the elder Eliezer Alfonzo for years in Venezuela, reached out Saturday morning and promised him he’d save the ball from his son’s first major-league hit.
Sports
Kylian Mbappé’s seventh goal of the World Cup lifts France past Paraguay in physical Round of 16 match
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The United States may not have been in action on Independence Day, but France — who fittingly played an important role in the Revolutionary War — was on the pitch in Philadelphia against Paraguay in a massive Round of 16 clash for a trip to the quarterfinals.
It was a hot day in the birthplace of our nation, and that made things difficult for both teams in more ways than one.
While Paraguay is a great squad, they were significant underdogs against a heavily favored French team led by superstar Kylian Mbappé, who has been lighting it up this tournament.
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French and Paraguayan players get into a shoving match during their Round of 16 match on Saturday in Philadelphia. (Kyle Ross-Imagn Images)
Obviously, the heat itself is a factor, but it also made for a slower pitch, something that was believed to play into the hands of Paraguay.
However, most of the action in the first half was played on their end as France put the pressure on through the first half hour of the match.
It was intense, and that intensity boiled over in the 35th minute with some pushing and shoving after Mbappé and Paraguay’s Andrés Cubas started a wild shoving match.
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But while the intensity ramped up — and stayed high for pretty much the entire game — Paraguay weathered the storm and had every reason to feel good about reaching halftime with the game scoreless.
France got some more scoring opportunities in the early part of the second half, including a near-breakaway for Mbappé.
France’s Kylian Mbappe scored the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning goal against Paraguay on a penalty kick. (James Lang-Imagn Images)
In the 67th minute, France was awarded a penalty kick for a foul against Desire Doue that had to go to VAR for review, and it was Mbappé who took it.
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Mbappé has tended to do most of his damage in the second half, and that trend continued here with him drilling the penalty past Paraguay goaltender Orlando Gill.
That was his 19th career World Cup goal, and his seventh of this tournament alone, tying him with Argentina’s Lionel Messi for the tournament lead.
Paraguay seemed to fade after the Mbappé goal, but turned it on again late, forcing Mike Maignan to make his first save of the day about 89 and a half minutes into the match.
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It seemed like Paraguay’s plan was to try and get a rise out of the French, and they succeeded in drawing three yellow cards. In fact, they even tried to keep that going after the match with players meeting near midfield for some more pushing and shoving.
But France is moving on, and they will take on Morocco in a quarterfinal match on Thursday in Boston.
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