Sporting an Olympic gold medal after conquering a strong field while keeping the many distractions at bay, Canada’s Brad Jacobs came out firing shortly after stepping off the podium.
He guided Canada to a 9-6 win over Great Britain’s Bruce Mouat in a final that will go down as a classic between the top two teams in the world.
The win came a week after Canada vice Marc Kennedy used profanity during an in-game discussion with Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson, who felt the Canadians were committing an infraction by ‘double-touching’ curling stones. It snowballed into one of the major buzz stories of the Games.
For Jacobs, all of the buildup was finally released in a post-game news conference.
“For anyone who called us cheaters, for anyone who said negative things about Marc Kennedy, about us, about Canada, about our families, 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,” he said.
Brad Jacobs earns his 2nd Olympic curling gold medal and Canada’s 1st since his win in 2014
A day after the Canada-Sweden game, World Curling issued a rule clarification and statement. It noted that curlers were not allowed to touch the granite after releasing the handle.
Additional umpires were stationed near the hog lines and two curlers — including Canadian women’s skip Rachel Homan — had rocks pulled. The sport’s governing body backtracked the next day.
“It didn’t seem like they were prepared for what went down,” Jacobs said.
“It didn’t seem like officials were prepared to officiate it properly. And so it was a little bit of a mess.”
Unlike sports where officials follow the play or make calls when appropriate, curlers are usually left to sort out issues on their own. Sportsmanship is usually top of mind with curlers proactively declaring if there was an infraction.
Historically umpires have helped “interpret the rules and give advice,” World Curling president Beau Welling said, while the sport’s self-policing system takes place.
“We’ve been looking at and addressing how we (give) the umpire more power, more empowerment to go make decisions,” he said from his office at Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.
“And that’s a big cultural shift. We can’t turn that on overnight.”
Canada’s Olympic curling controversy, explained
Changes shouldn’t be expected at the upcoming world championships, he said, but the organization’s competition and rules commission will be working on the issue.
“There’ll be a series of engagements we’ll do with stakeholders from that group, whether it be athletes, member associations directly, high-performance people, et cetera,” he said.
“And we will continue to evolve this. There are obviously budget ramifications that will get into all of this too.”
The use of instant replay or video-assisted technology has also been a hot topic over the last fortnight.
“It’s complicated because it’s not like this static thing,” Welling said.
“It’s going up and down the sheet of ice. We feel like if we go there, we’d need to be able to look at everything on every sheet at the same time.
“And it’s a pretty voluminous effort to be able to do that.”
Curling always seems to be one of the more popular sports at the Games with many non-sport fans filling the venue and watching the action. Social media was ablaze with clips of the Kennedy-Eriksson interaction, memes, accusations of cheating, all while international outlets like TMZ, BBC, CNN and the New York Times picked up the story.
Good or bad, the Roaring Game made quite a mark.
“I think the publicity part has been positive, like on the whole,” Welling said.
Brad Jacobs and his Canadian curling rink collect their gold medals
“I think we have worked hard to try to tamp down the (controversy) situation because it started to, in our mind, get a little bit maybe inappropriate.”
The Canadians didn’t get into specifics on the avalanche of online activity they faced. After the final, Kennedy was asked if he was under a social media blackout.
“I probably will be for the rest of my life after what I just experienced,” he said.
Kennedy added he leaned on his family, friends, teammates and support staff to make sure his week was “really quiet.”
“Reading any of that stuff would have weakened me and weakened our team,” Kennedy said. “So we just stayed away from the noise and we were able to come out on top.”
Jacobs, Kennedy, second Brett Gallant and lead Ben Hebert will soon start preparing for the upcoming Montana’s Brier in St. John’s. The winner will represent Canada at the world men’s championship next month in Ogden, Utah.
“World Curling has got themselves into a mess a few times in recent years with different sweeping and foam and rules,” Jacobs said.
“So hopefully, us as players can maybe get a little bit 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.”
Homan’s Ottawa-based team won bronze. Jacobs was the last Canadian men’s skip to win Olympic gold, taking top spot in 2014 at Sochi, Russia.
“It feels like we climbed the mountain together, lifting each other all the way there to the top,” Gallant said. “And just what an incredible feeling. We’re so proud to represent Canada.”
