First, the actual accusation. In this incident, Eriksson accused Kennedy of a double touch, saying he threw the rock and then touched it again. You’re allowed to do that is legal up to the line on the ice where players must let go of the stone — the “hog line,” I regret to inform you — but plainly illegal after it. If a team touches their stones, intentionally or accidentally, after it crosses the hog line, they’re supposed to remove the stone from play.

In videos of the incident, Eriksson appears to be right. Kennedy looks to touch the stone as it’s crossing the hog line. He’s only tapping it with one finger, and he’s doing it before the stone is even fully across the line — but it’s a violation.

Kennedy is also touching the non-handle part of the stone, which is also a violation, no matter where on the ice it takes place. That also should’ve led to Canada removing the stone.

Sweden tried to get officials to deal with their complaints. There’s video of Eriksson asking an official onsite about the rules — which comically ends with Canada’s Ben Hebert coming over to the officials to say “oh actually Sweden is doing the same thing they’re accusing us of, keep an eye out for that.”

So what did the refs do?

It’s curling! There aren’t refs!

Curling is, more or less, officiated by the players on the ice. There’s no VAR, and there aren’t even refs closely watching the game. Players can call over officials for disagreements or measurements, but they’re broadly expected to sort things out between themselves. Sometimes it works — in the mixed doubles semifinal, Team USA’s Korey Dropkin immediately owned up to maybe infinitesimally touching a rock accidentally.

Here, it didn’t. Sweden said that Canada broke the rules. Canada said they didn’t. That left everybody at an impasse. (You can force your opponent to remove a rock — it happened at the 2018 Olympics — but it’s considered VERY rude.)

World Curling released a statement saying that after the complaints from Sweden, on-site officials started closely watching Canada. But they didn’t spot any infractions in the next three ends, and then they went back to doing whatever it is they were doing beforehand. (Trading pins? Watching the luge relay?)

Basically, we’re dealing with the honor system, even at the top levels of the sport. The honor system, though, has a pretty notable flaw: what if somebody can’t be trusted to be honorable?

This seems to be a recurring issue in modern curling. It’s actually something I wrote about last April, after the 2025 World Championships. In a playoff game between China and Norway, the Norwegians accused a Chinese player of touching a moving rock, and video evidence confirmed it … but the Chinese team simply refused to admit they’d done it. And that was that. There were other allegations against the Chinese team in the same tournament, but again, they refused to own up to it. It was a big scandal in the curling world.

It’s possible the insistence on self-officiating these games keeps making things more complicated than they should be. In other sports, this would’ve been over in seconds when a ref steps in and makes a call.

Are refs always right? No. Do they prevent controversies from popping up from time to time? My goodness, no. A lot of times, they actually cause them.

But on the plus side … when things go wrong in sports with refs … you can blame refs. When things go wrong in curling, you have to blame each other. It turns small infractions into big blowups where athletes feel they need to defend their honor. After the match, the Swedes and Canadians repeatedly mentioned that they’ve been friends for almost 20 years, competing at events across the world together. And yet here they were, cursing at each other, questioning each others’ honor and sportsmanship, ranging the full gamut from passive-aggressive to aggressive-aggressive.

I hope they don’t change a thing.

If you had asked me to pick the biggest favorite of the 2026 Olympics, the one athlete most likely to win a gold medal, I would have picked Malinin.

Malinin had won 16 consecutive competitions dating back to November 2023, when he finished second in the Grand Prix de France. He’d reached every podium since March 2022, just a month after the last Olympics. And he was dominant. His wins were by huge margins. He’d set the record for highest score in a free skate three separate times.

And he was leading after the short program! Since the introduction of the current scoring system after the 2002 Olympics, the skater leading after the short program in men’s figure skating had won four of five gold medals And Malinin was one of the best of all time.

And then: Disaster. Malinin fell twice and severely downgraded two other jumps. At one point, the broadcast indicated that he had received 1.04 points for a successful single axel when he was supposed to get over 15 for a quadruple axel. He only completed three of his seven proposed quad jumps.

There are, of course, potential explanations. Some have suggested this is because of the ice in the arena, which is also being used for short track speed skating, even though figure skaters prefer “softer ice.” But short track and figure skating have shared venues at every Olympics since the introduction of short track in 1992 — and besides, we’ve heard more complaints from the short track competitors that they feel like they’re skating on figure skating ice than vice versa.

There was also Malinin’s busy schedule, which bronze medalist Shun Sato called “toxic.” Malinin was skating his fourth program in a week, after he was asked to do both the short program and the free skate in the team program. Malinin had apparently wanted to skp the free skate of the team event for rest purposes, but was talked into competing the night before because the team score was so close. At the time, it seemed like a great idea — Malinin was brilliant, Team USA won gold — but since the introduction of the team event in 2014, nobody has won an individual figure skating medal after skating both halves of the team event. Malinin was the first American man to even try.

And then, Malinin had his own explanation. “if they had sent me to Beijing, I wouldn’t have skated like that.” In 2022, USA Figure Skating left 17-year old Malinin off the Beijing Olympic team despite a second-place finish at nationals, instead picking Jason Brown, a more experienced skater who had outperformed Malinin for most of the season. Malinin seems to feel if he had gotten Olympic experience in 2022, he wouldn’t have gotten overwhelmed by the experience today.

He kept going. “The pressure of the Olympics really gets you,” Malinin said. The pressure is unreal… I just thought that all I needed to do was go out there and trust the process that I’ve always been doing with every competition. But of course, it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics. And I think people only realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. So it was really just something that overwhelmed me. And I just felt like. I had no control.”

It sounds silly. It sounds like sour grapes. It sounds like … an excuse.

But it also might be the most honest thing I’ve ever heard an athlete say. How many times have you heard an athlete, after the most crushing loss, say that they were mentally unready? That they got overwhelmed by nerves? That they were crushed by the pressure of the competition? He might have been making an excuse, but he was also admitting

And it seems to happen all the time at the Olympics — in multiple sports, in multiple events. Malinin might have been the top athlete I picked to win their event, but some of the others — Mikaela Shiffrin in the skiing, Chloe Kim and Scotty James in the halfpipe, those damn Slovenian ski jumpers I kept writing about — have also fallen short. The Olympics are different.

It happened to Nathan Chen in 2018. People called him the Quad King (Frank Ocean voice: 🎶what’s a Quad King to a Quad God 🎶 ) but he fell a bunch of times and crashed off podium …

… and then he came back four years later and won the Olympic gold medal.

This was one of the most massive disappointments in Olympic history. But if what Malinin clearly believes about the Olympic pressure is true, he can build off it and learn from this in four years. It’s like someone once said in the annoying spoken word poetry that plays during his routine: “The past is not a chain, but a thread. Pull it, and it may lead you home.”

Malinin’s loss overshadowed a legitimately awesome moment: Shaidorov winning the gold medal, the first Kazakh to win gold in any Winter Olympic event since 1994.

Shaidorov was in fifth place after the short program. Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski were talking about how his skate could help him build for the 2030 Olympics … AND THEN HE WON GOLD.

Nobody had ever come back to win gold after being ranked that low after the short. In fact, under the current scoring system introduced after the 2002 Olympics, the farthest down the leaderboard any gold medalist had ever been heading into the free skate was … second.

Once again, a biathlon medalist used their post-game interview to dramatically make an announcement related to his romance life …

… Fillon Maillet, the gold medalist, revealed his girlfriend is pregnant and dedicated his performance to her! “I want to dedicate my race today to my girlfriend because we are expecting a baby, and she has supported me for many years and helped me be here today.” Awwww! So sweet!

Another bronze medal for Lægreid, who probably was thinking “OH SO IT’S OKAY WHEN HE DOES IT.” According to NBC, the Norwegian “kept his focus on his athletic feats” instead of going full Councilman Bill Dexhart at these Olympics.

What’s the record for the widest age range among medalists in one event? The 19-year old Jilek won gold, his second medal of the Olympics after taking silver in the 5,000m …

… and the bronze went to someone twice his age, 40-year old Jorrit Bergsma, who became the new oldest speed skating medalist ever 12 years after winning the gold in this same event in Sochi.

But I’m burying the lede: Look at Bergsma’s mullet!

I AVOIDED JINXING AN ATHLETE IN MY DAILY NEWSLETTER PREVIEWS!!!!!

To be clear: Exactly one athlete. Just this one. Bad news for everybody else. BUT I’M COUNTING IT!

I was right about Australia having their first two-gold Olympics … wrong about the event!

BTW, you know who doesn’t have any gold medals so far? Canada! I had my “Commonwealth realms that are good at winter sports” power rankings totally wrong!

Brutal for James: He’s now a 9-time X Games gold medalist, 4-time World Champion, and a 3-time Olympic medalist … but none of those medals are gold. He crumbled to the snow after falling on the final trick of his final run, assuring he wouldn’t win the gold.

Two noteworthy things in this game: An absolutely incredible first period by Italian goalie Gabriella Durante, who saved 19 of 20 shots, including this diving stick save…

… and the fact that Italy got a little scrappy after Team USA’s sixth goal.

Great fight (literally) from the Italians after a fun run to the quarterfinals — hopefully they don’t have to wait for the next Olympics literally hosted in Italy to qualify.

a HUGE upset. The Canadian squad led by Rachel Homan is clearly the best in the world, having won back-to-back World Championships …

… but they absolutely did not play that way Saturday. Missed shots, sloppy play, and the first win by Team USA against Canada in nine tries at the Olympics!

Homan also seemed like she might be the best player in the world in at the 2018 Olympics after winning the 2017 World Championship. But Team Canada went 4-5 and missed the knockout round. It might be another one of those Olympic things.

Olympic debut for this event! We love to see it!

(Except it kinda seems redundant? It’s literally just exactly the same as moguls, but with a bracket where competitors go down the mogul slope side-by-side?)

Could be a chance at redemption for Australia’s Jakara Anthony, who felt like clearly the best skier but took a bad turn on her final run …

Or, you know, another chance for Team USA to win a medal after Liz Lemley and Jaelin Kauf won gold and silver.

Excited for one of my favorite stories of these Olympics: Brazilian skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen could win the first Winter Olympic medal by a South American athlete ever.

And yes — he’s really Brazilian! He was born in Norway to a Norwegian father and Brazilian mother, and split his time between the two countries. He speaks Portuguese and sambas during trophy ceremonies.

He started his career competing for Norway and abruptly retired in 2023 at just 23 years old, but came back to the sport competing for Brazil last season. He’s medaled in two World Cup giant slalom races this season., so he’s got the goods.

The 2025 World Champion in this event is Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, now known to the world audience as the woman who got her credit cards stolen by her teammate…

… and the 2024 World Champion in this event is Julia Simon, the woman who stole those credit cards and has now won two Olympic gold medals in Milan. Simon has missed just one shot through two events and can win again if she keeps it up.

This could be the difference between Jordan Stolz having a great Olympics and a legendary Olympics.

Of the three races where Stolz is a multi-time world champion, the 500m is his worst. He’s won it five of nine times on the World Cup circuit this season.

Same number of bones as the guys! True story.

These two-day sliding events can be boring if one slider has a big lead after the first two runs but Austria’s Janine Flock is only up .04 seconds on Germany’s Susanne Kreher.

A chance at redemption for Canada’s William Dandjinou, who led most of the 1,000 only to get pipped at the finish line and finish fourth. He’s the reigning World Champ in this event.