We now know who shot the viral video in the 2026 Olympic curling controversy.
Swedish public broadcaster SVT, in a statement to Postmedia’s Jonny Wakefield on Monday, said it shot the hotly debated video showing a close-up of Canadian third Marc Kennedy’s release during a game against Sweden on Friday.
After a profanity-laced dispute between Kennedy and Oskar Eriksson in which the Swedish third accused the Canadian third of double-touching the rock on his release, Canadian team staff contended Saturday that Swedish fans and staff were shooting video at the hog line outside of Olympic broadcasting rules.
SVT told Wakefield it did nothing wrong.
“Yes, it’s correct that SVT filmed the sequence with Team Canada,” the broadcaster said. “Filming in the arena is allowed from certain camera positions. This was not filmed from one of those positions, it was filmed from the stands which is not formally a camera position.
“However, we had asked OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Service) to be able to film from the stands a few days before the Canada-Sweden game, and that request was approved as long as we didn’t film the Olympic Family section. We have openly filmed from the stands in the days after the Canada-Sweden game, and OBS haven’t said anything about it.”
Sportsnet reached out to OBS for comment.
The double-touch dispute led to World Curling adding more umpires to watch for the violation prior to Saturday and Sunday’s draws. In those draws, a Canadian women’s stone and Great Britain men’s stone were removed from play after officials called violations.
Canadian women’s skip Rachel Homan was livid at the call.
Prior to Sunday’s final draw, World Curling announced it was removing the extra officials from the monitoring duty and was going back to a more traditional setup.
