Canada-Sweden Olympic curling feud still going: ‘He’s a complete prick and nobody really likes him’

The Canadian Olympic men’s curling team isn’t done talking smack with Sweden.

Canada’s Marc Kennedy went viral for his swear-filled exchange with Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson after he was accused of cheating.

Canada went on to win the match before capturing gold one week later.

Now home from the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics, Canadian lead Ben Hebert had more to say. In an interview with Sportsnet 960 in Calgary, Hebert didn’t mince words, calling Eriksson a “weasel” and a “prick.”

“Oskar Eriksson, as much as he’s a weasel, he’s an unreal player,” Hebert told hosts George Rusic and Matt Rose. “It’s a good thing that he’s an awesome player, because he’s a complete prick and nobody really likes him.”

The Swedes entered their match versus Canada with a 0-3 record, something that Hebert believes led to “sour grapes.”

Canada was golden in Olympic men’s curling (Eric Bolte/Imagn Images)

“These antics aren’t new to us with Oskar, so we usually just brush it off. Everybody knows that in the curling circles.”

Hebert also said that what Kennedy did was perfectly fine in Canada, but a new rule brought in by the World Curling Federation earlier this year made things different at the Olympics.

“In Canada, you can throw the rock however you want, touch any part of the rock, no big deal,” Hebert explained. “[Oskar] found this loophole, sounds like he pre-planned it to fire us up and get under our skin.”

Though Hebert is clearly still emotional talking about the incident at hand, he did give Sweden props, saying that they “whooped us” in past years. That has since changed, however.

“They’ve been on a serious two-to-three-year decline here. I think that’s probably tough for them… I think they were just kind of reeling and understanding that they had no chance, just stir some sh*t. The only way the Swedish media was going to follow them was if they did something like that.”

Canada beat Norway in the semi-final before knocking off Great Britain for gold (Candice Ward/COC)

At the end of the day, Canada had the last laugh, something Hebert believes was justice well served.

“Here’s one way to deal with a bully: you punch them in the mouth. That’s what we did. We got first place, sat on the podium with a gold, and he got dead last.

Kennedy brings back Olympic gold for St. Albert

A St. Albert curler is off to the Brier this week after winning gold for Canada at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.

The Gazette spoke with St. Albert curler Marc Kennedy Tuesday Feb. 24. He had just returned from the 2026 Winter Games in Italy and was packing for a trip to St. John’s, N.L., for the 2026 Montana’s Brier the next day.

Kennedy and the rest of Team Brad Jacobs won gold for Canada at the Olympics Feb. 21 in a 9-6 victory over Britain’s Team Bruce Mouat.

Kennedy said it felt great to be a three-time Olympic medallist (he won bronze in 2022 and gold in 2010), adding that he felt blessed to have had such an illustrious career in curling.

“The medal is amazing, but it’s really about the journey,” he said, and all the work his team and supports did to get here.

Tumultuous tourney

Kennedy said the team knew they were in for a tough fight this Olympics, as the rest of the world had fielded some serious talent.

Canada went 7-2 in the opening round robin to reach the semi-finals.

The match against Sweden drew international headlines after Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson accused Kennedy of breaking the rules by touching the curling stone after he had released it — a “double touch.” This lead to an angry exchange between the two during which Kennedy told Eriksson to “f**k off.” That profanity earned Team Canada a verbal warning from World Curling.

Video footage appeared to show one of Kennedy’s fingers touching the granite part of the stone for less than a second after he released it but before the stone reached the hog line.

Kennedy said the confrontation arose in part due to a difference between Curling Canada’s rules and those used by World Curling. Curling Canada does not explicitly state that touching the granite part of the rock post-release was illegal. World Curling does, and Team Canada was not aware of this difference.

“If I’m being completely honest, this is probably something I’ve been doing for 10 to 15 years,” Kennedy said of the granite touch, and no one has ever raised it as an issue before.

“This has never been enforced as far as I know at an international curling event.”

Curling analysts interviewed by the CBC agreed that while such a touch was a rules infraction, it was a stretch to call it cheating, as it was unlikely to have any effect on the rock’s trajectory.

Kennedy questioned why Sweden never raised this issue during the many previous times they played against him, and characterized their move to do so at the Olympics as the “tactics of a desperate team.”

“I took the bait and I definitely should have handled it better,” the St. Albert curler said.

Kennedy apologized for his on-ice behaviour, saying that he took his job as a role model seriously and knew how his actions could affect young players.

“I don’t apologize for standing up and defending my team and teammates and my integrity,” he said. “We weren’t doing anything purposefully to get an advantage over another team.”

Kennedy said World Curling later clarified the double-touch rule, and he and his teammates changed how they threw rocks as a result.

Ninth end win

Kennedy said that incident helped the team come together and focus on their game as they defeated Norway to face Britain for the gold.

The two teams traded the lead for the first eight ends, with no major mistakes by either squad. The turning point came in the ninth, when Britain missed four doubles in a row (a double in curling is an attempt to knock out two stones with one throw) when they had just a one-point lead on Canada.

Kennedy said he thought, “Oh man, this is my opportunity,” when Britain’s Grant Hardie made one of those misses late in the ninth. Kennedy parked one of his stones in such a way that it would be nearly impossible for Canada not to score at least two points and take the lead. An ambitious shot from Jacobs made that three points, giving Canada a two-point lead going into the final end.

Kennedy was excited and relieved when Britain failed to tie the game with their last throw, securing Canada the gold.

“That was our ultimate goal as a team when we (came) together four years ago, and reaching that point was a pretty special feeling,” he recalled.

Kennedy confirmed this was probably his last Olympics, adding that it was time for a new generation to step up. He had no plans to stop curling, though, and would be back in town this March for the Marc Kennedy Junior Classic.