Feuding curlers, ‘slushy’ ice and other shocking Olympics scandals

Are the Winter Olympics plagued with scandals? Is ice wet? (And, yes, wet ice is one of the scandals.)

There are always controversies at the Olympics, which continue through Feb. 22 and which happen so infrequently that the world’s eyes are bound to be laser-focused on them. Below, we break down what’s causing the most uproar in Milano Cortina:

Many Olympic events happen on ice, so you’d expect Italian organizers to get it right. But there have been numerous issues (and that’s not even counting that the hockey rinks are 3 feet shorter than NHL rinks, which everyone agreed to in advance).

Short track speed skaters and commentators have consistently complained about the ice, which they report is too “soft” or “slushy” and which is causing some races to restart as many as five times because of falls occurring right at the beginning. U.S. competitor Corinne Stoddard, a favorite who has gone medal-less, said the ice seems to have been formed with figure skating in mind instead of short track skating, which requires a harder surface for the speedsters’ blades to grab onto.

But the figure skating ice also is on thin ice. The biggest skating name in Milan, Ilia Malinin, fell twice on the way to finishing eighth in the men’s event he was considered a lock to win. He said the ice was “not the best condition,” while also acknowledging that his competitors were dealing with the same conditions. (No stranger to figure skating controversy, Malinin finished second at U.S. nationals in 2022 and thought he’d earned a trip to the Olympics in Beijing. Jason Brown was selected instead, which Malinin was still grumbling about after his eighth-place finish, suggesting he’d have been better prepared in 2026 if he’d gone in 2022.)

Italian organizers say the ice is constantly monitored and continues to be frozen.

It takes a lot to get one of the famously mild-mannered Canadians to repeatedly spew a four-letter word on international television. But that happened when one member of the Swedish men’s curling team accused Marc Kennedy, a Canadian stone thrower (the person who gets things started), of touching the stone more than once. No penalties were incurred but accusations have continued to fly (including, more recently, against the Canadian women’s team) and Kennedy was warned that his language could get him suspended if it recurls.

It was a mild upset that American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates were beaten for the gold by French rivals Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. But eyebrows raised when it became evident that a French judge had scored her country’s team eight points higher than the U.S. athletes, while every other judge had them roughly even.

Figure skating fans likely flashed back to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, when a French judge was implicated in collusion that eventually resulted in an overhaul of the judging system and Canadian silver medal pair Jamie Salé and David Pelletier being declared gold medalists a week after the competition ended.

Currently, officials of the International Skating Union are standing by the French judge — but they did the same thing in Salt Lake City. Also, some skating fans already resented Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron for their continued support of skater Nikolaj Sørensen, who is friends with Cizeron and the former partner/current fiancée of Fournier Beaudry. Sørensen was briefly suspended from competition after allegations of a 2012 incident of sexual abuse surfaced, although the suspension is not currently in effect because of jurisdictional questions. Meanwhile, Cizeron’s former ice dance partner, Gabriella Papadakis, with whom he won gold at the 2022 Winter Olympics, has written a book accusing him of “emotional abuse.”