This year’s Olympics had something for everyone. There was curling, for those who enjoy watching people talk for longer than your grandmother on the phone, and there was the skeleton, for others who think it’s enjoyable to watch people fling themselves into mortal danger. But it wasn’t all fun and games at Milano Cortina. This year, notably, was a controversial one.
At this year’s Olympics, curling was brought to the forefront of conversation after Canadian curler Marc Kennedy committed the biggest (and probably only) curling cheating scandal of all time, disappointing thousands of polite Canadians. When Kennedy released the stone over the hog line—the mark where you have to let go of the stone—he illegally ‘double-touched’ it! To the untrained eye, it didn’t seem like anything went wrong, but to the trained eye, the move was like a snowball to the face. Swedish curler Oskar Eriksson accused Canada of cheating, to which Kennedy responded with a string of expletives. If you had told me a month ago that a Canadian would be cursing at people, I would have laughed in your face.
Despite this debacle, Canada still brought home the gold medal, which is really making me question the whole “cheaters never win” thing. Kennedy later told ESPN that the win was “amazing” and also mentioned that “a weaker team would have fell flat on their face.” I like that curling is turning into a real cutthroat sport. Maybe at the next Olympics they’ll just fight to the death with their brooms instead of sweeping the ice.
Nobody could’ve seen it coming, but the gold medal hockey game for both the womens’ and the mens’ teams was US vs. Canada (a huge upset, seeing as this has only happened eight times before).
Both US teams squeaked out an overtime win, but nobody’s talking about the game anymore. They’re talking about what happened after the game. While the men’s team was celebrating in the locker room, FBI director Kash Patel was…also in the locker room, pumping his arms in the air and chugging a beer? I guess he just has a lot of free time in between the firings of FBI agents. Patel set up a call for the team with President Donald Trump, who extended an invitation for them to come to The White House. Trump also said that he would “have to” invite the women’s team, which sparked laughter among the men. He went on to say that he would be “impeached” if he didn’t. To be honest, every time I look at the news it feels like Trump is trying to get himself impeached, but I guess not.
This exchange has provoked a lot of backlash against the men’s team. Hilary Knight, the captain of the US Women’s Hockey team, called Trump’s invitation a “distasteful joke,” and 7NEWS Australia (you know it’s serious when another continent fires up their printing presses) posted a compilation of Olympic’s viewers saying the men’s team “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Despite this, the men’s team still visited The White House and appeared at the State of the Union address, where Trump introduced them by seemingly taking credit for their win, saying that “before [I] came along we were always losing, but now we’re winning too much.”
With another gripping round of Olympics scandals complete, we’ll see you again in 2028!
This article also appears in our March 2026 print edition.
