After a controversial Winter Olympics that made them public enemy No. 1, the Canada men’s curling team are determined to have the last laugh after winning gold.

Marc Kennedy and his Canada team beat Britain on Saturday to leave the Winter Olympics as champions. And after a ‘double touching’ scandal where Kennedy was the target of a complaint by an angry Sweden team, victory was sweet.

‘It means the world to me to see my teammates with a medal around their neck,’ Kennedy said. ‘I don’t know if people will ever understand what we went through this week as a team — what I put them through this week as a team.’

The sport was sent into turmoil during the round-robin phase when Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Kennedy, Canada’s vice skip, of touching the rock again after initially releasing it down the sheet of ice. Kennedy responded with an outburst full of expletives.

‘I let my emotions get the best of me,’ Kennedy said. ‘I stood up for my teammates. I’ll never back down from that. We moved on, we moved forward and we did something amazing and a weaker team would have fell flat on their face.’

But if Kennedy was in the mood to reflect, Brad Jacobs was far more bullish when it came to dealing with the Canada critics.

Marc Kennedy had the last laugh as Canada won curling gold at the Winter Olympics

Brad Jacobs had a fiery message to critics after what was a polarizing event at the Games

‘For anyone who called us cheaters, for anyone who said negative things about Marc Kennedy, about us, about Canada, about our families, I hope that the image of us standing on top of the podium, embracing one another, smiling ear to ear with our gold medals is burned into your brain forever,’ he said.

‘When some things went down this week and people were using some pretty outrageous words like ‘cheating’ associated now with our team, I’ll guarantee you that only motivated us further.’

Several other accusations of double-touching followed Kennedy’s outburst, and Canada lost its next match against Switzerland before steadying itself to go all the way.

In response, curling’s higher-ups first stationed umpires at the hog line to check for future fouls, but then reverted to the traditional practice of players policing themselves.

‘This is a brand new rule that apparently was put in very recently that I think World Curling really does need to do a deep dive on and take a look at,’ Jacobs said. ‘It didn’t seem like they were prepared for what went down. … It was a little bit of a mess.

‘So hopefully us as players can maybe get a little more involved and help them figure out the best thing moving forward for the sport so that this type of nonsense doesn’t happen again.’

It was Canada’s first gold in men’s curling since the 2014 Sochi Games, when they also beat Britain in the final with Jacobs as the skip.

This is his first Olympics since – he lost in the Canadian Olympic trials for 2018 and 2022.