While the curlers have shown their anger over the situation during matches, fans of the sport and Canadians have questioned whether the team acted in the spirit of curling.
“It’s a sad day for Canadian sport,” Tim Gray, from Alberta, told the BBC. “Integrity in the sport is important, even if you have to call it on yourself.”
An opinion piece in the Canadian news outlet, the Globe and Mail, pointed to some of the frustration: “These Canadian curling teams are not fun bad guys. They come off like the sort of competitors who need so desperately to win that they will do anything – even things that are pointless – in order to get there.”
Cathal Kelly, the writer of the opinion piece, continued: “There’s an easy way out of this – stop struggling. Stop acting like our curling reputation matters more than our national one. Be the bigger man and woman, even if you don’t think you did anything wrong.”
The controversy began on Friday when Swedish player Oskar Eriksson accused Kennedy of double-touching.
As the game continued, Kennedy and Eriksson got into a verbal back-and-forth that included expletives.
Their exchange quickly went viral as a video appearing to show Kennedy touching the stone on occasion.
Kennedy got a verbal warning from World Curling for using foul language, but he was not formally charged with cheating by the governing body.
The next day Kennedy said: “I probably could have handled it better. But we’re human out there and there’s a lot of emotions. I’m not going to apologise for defending my teammates and standing up for myself.”
“I’ve curled my whole life, never once with the intention of getting an advantage through cheating,” he added.