Curling Stones scandal and ceremony boycott grows: live updates from the 2026 Paralympic Winter Games

The Milan Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games officially begin this Friday and News will be following everything.

From medal moments to politically-related controversies, we’ll keep you informed throughout the sporting event, which marks the 50th anniversary of the first Paralympic Winter Games.

The competition began Wednesday with wheelchair curling and para-alpine skiing events.

The opening ceremony will take place on Friday at Verona’s Olympic Arena, the historic Roman amphitheater, and will feature performances by The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, Italian house music trio Meduza and more.

The Games will continue until March 15 with the closing ceremony at the Cortina Olympic Curling Stadium, a venue that also hosted the opening ceremony of the 1956 Winter Olympics.

Check out our latest updates here:

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Paraalpine skier Laurie Stephens and ice hockey player Josh Paul have been named Team USA’s flag bearers at Friday’s opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games.

Read more on the official Paralympic Games website:

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VERONA, Italy (AP) — The Milan Cortina Paralympic Winter Games will officially open later Friday amid war tensions in the Middle East and with some countries planning to boycott the opening ceremony over the return of the Russian flag to the world sporting stage.

Ukraine heads the list of countries that will not attend the opening ceremony in Verona to protest the decision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to allow Russian athletes to compete under their own flag and with their national anthem. The Russian flag has not flown at the Paralympic Games since the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, while the national anthem has not been heard at any Olympic or Paralympic Games since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.

The opening ceremony will take place at the Arena di Verona, marking the first time that a Paralympic ceremony has been held at a UNESCO World Heritage site. The former Arena has been modernized with new wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms along with other safety improvements.

The Milan Cortina Games mark the 50th anniversary of the Paralympic Winter Games. More than 600 athletes will compete in 79 events in six sports. These are the most important Paralympic Winter Games in history, with a record female participation, according to the IPC.

Para-cross-country skier Aboulfazl Khatibi is expected to be the only athlete from Iran to participate in the Games that begin less than a week after the United States and Israel launched their military attack.

Khatibi was announced as Iran’s flag bearer, but he will not actually carry the flag: the task will be given to volunteers from all nations because not all flag bearers will be able to attend the ceremony due to logistics and training issues.

Many athletes will miss the opening ceremony as they are in different competition groups across Italy. Curling tryouts began Wednesday.

China arrives seeking to consolidate itself as the main Paralympic power. The Chinese have topped the medal table at the Summer Paralympics since 2004, and four years ago they topped the Winter Games for the first time with a record-breaking performance.

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The participation of Russia and Belarus in the Paralympic Games was the result of a democratic process, the president of the International Paralympic Committee, Andrew Parsons, said on Thursday, a day before the opening ceremony.

Russia and Belarus will have a combined total of 10 athletes at the Games in Italy, competing only in skiing and snowboarding events.

Both countries were banned from Paralympic competitions after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but were admitted back into the IPC in September following a vote by the organisation’s general assembly.

As they were still prohibited by the winter sports federations, both nations obtained places for these paralympic games after winning a Court of Arbitration for Sport appeal against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) in December.

The IPC announced the decision to award the 10 places last month, during the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, provoking the ire of several countries.

“I recognize that this decision has not been well received in some parts of the world,”” Parsons said at a news conference. “I want to emphasize that the IPC is a democratic global organization whose decisions on member suspensions are determined by its members.”

Several nations have decided to skip Friday’s opening ceremony parade following the readmission of Russia and Belarus, to show solidarity with Ukraine.

“We cannot choose when to be democratic based on the outcome of the general assembly’s decisions,”” Parsons said. “It was a democratic process carried out in accordance with the procedure set out in the IPC statutes. 177 of our 211 member organizations were present to vote.””

The Games have also been affected by the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, and the conflict has affected travel, including for athletes and teams bound for Italy.

“The IPC is currently monitoring the situation and continues to collect, confirm and evaluate available information to determine the impact on these Games and the wider Paralympic movement.” Parsons said.

“We recognize that the situation affects not only the National Paralympic Committees competing in the Games, but also our membership in general.”

The IPC will have a record 612 athletes from 56 delegations at the Games which run until March 15. Friday’s opening ceremony will take place in the ancient Roman arena in Verona, about 170 kilometers (106 miles) east of Milan.

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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — The Paralympic Winter Games come to Milan Cortina to celebrate its 50th anniversary, with China seeking to extend its dominance as a Paralympic power and Ukraine and other nations boycotting the opening ceremony over the return of the Russian flag and anthem.

The Games will officially begin on Friday amid war tensions in the Middle East, which caused travel difficulties for some of the nations arriving in Italy due to widespread flight disruptions. Iran was supposed to have a skier in Milan Cortina.

Wheelchair curling kicked off the competition schedule on Wednesday and the sport was quickly hit by another scandal when two stones were stolen from the Olympic Curling Stadium. During the Olympics, the Canadian team was accused of cheating.

The Paralympic Games are back in Italy 20 years after Turin 2006. It will be the 14th edition of the Paralympic Winter Games since the inaugural edition in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden, in 1976. Nearly 200 athletes competed in two sports at that time. Some 660 athletes will participate in the six sports in Italy from Friday to March 15.

The United States will send a 72-member team to Italy, up from the 67-member roster it brought to Beijing 2022. This year’s delegation includes Oksana Masters, the most decorated American Winter Paralympic athlete, and 16-year-old Paraalpine skier Meg Gustafson.

The Russian flag returns

Russian athletes will compete under their own flag at the Paralympic Games for the first time in more than a decade, and the country’s national anthem could be played for gold medalists for the first time on the stage of a major global sporting event since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Russian flag has not flown at the Paralympic Games since the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, while the national anthem has not been heard at any Olympic or Paralympic Games since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.

It could be the first time the anthem has been played on stage at a major global sporting event in four years.

Ukraine was the first to announce that it planned to boycott the opening ceremony because of Russia, and seven other nations planned not to attend for political reasons: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and the Netherlands.

Some other nations will not attend the opening ceremony to allow their athletes to rest before their competitions, not as a boycott.

Germany criticized the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to grant athletes from Russia and Belarus invitations to participate in Milan Cortina.

“The German Paralympic team will not participate in the Parade of Nations during the opening ceremony in Verona. This decision serves both to focus on the upcoming competitions and to respectfully express our solidarity with the Ukrainian delegation,” the German team said.

Russian athletes and athletes from Russia’s close ally Belarus received IPC spots on February 17.

The Russian and Belarusian athletes had been competing as individual neutral athletes without their flag, anthem or team colors.

Russian athletes were initially suspended due to a state-sponsored doping program, and sanctions have continued since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s sports minister Matvii Bidnyi had said in a social media post that the nation “will not participate in any further official Paralympic events.”

The IPC said most teams were already in Europe for training, but it was helping others travel amid the war in the Middle East.

Chinese dominance

The Milan Cortina Games will give China the opportunity to establish itself as the nation to beat in both the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games.

The Chinese have led the medal tally at the Summer Paralympics since 2004, and four years ago they won the Winter Games for the first time with a record performance that included 18 gold, 20 silver and 23 bronze medals.

China had more than 90 Para athletes competing in its home Games in 2022, the most ever by any nation, and this time it will send another large delegation to Italy. It will feature 70 athletes competing in Italy, which will constitute the largest overseas delegation in its history.

Norway is the most successful nation at the Paralympic Winter Games, ahead of the United States and Austria. China is 14th on the all-time medal table, but has competed in less than half of the Games involving Norway, the United States and Austria since the first Paralympic Winter Games in Ornskoldsvik.

China’s push to dominate the Winter Paralympics received a boost when it was chosen to host the Beijing Games, where it won 60 more medals than the single it won in PyeongChang in 2018.

Momentum continued after the local Games, with government funding still available for Paralympic programs and promoting changes on several fronts, including new laws for people with disabilities to encourage their access to sports.

“China has developed hundreds of disability sports instructors and coaches with government funding since they began investing in Paralympic sports. They trained coaches for mass participation and have been training coaches for elite sports,” said NaRi Shin, assistant professor of sports management at the University of Michigan.

“They have Para national games and regional games within the country’s borders, but they also had the Olympic Games in 2008 and the Winter Games in 2022, so they have maintained the series of competitions so that these athletes that they trained have the experience of competing at the highest level,” said Shin, who is an expert in sports development and how East Asian countries have invested in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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Iran’s ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel has led to the postponement of sporting events in several countries, while competitions elsewhere have been affected by travel disruptions, with thousands of flights canceled at some of the world’s busiest transit hubs.

The International Paralympic Committee said it is working to find solutions after several athletes had difficulty traveling to the Milan Cortina Paralympic Winter Games due to travel disruptions at several Middle East airports.

“The closure of airspace in the Middle East is affecting the arrival of some interested parties… we are working diligently with Milano Curtain 2026 to find solutions for those affected,” the IPC said on Tuesday.

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German athletes will not participate in the team parade in Milano Cortina paralympic games opening ceremony on Friday, in order to express solidarity with Ukraine, the German Paralympic Committee said on Wednesday.

Germany is the latest nation to skip the opening ceremony parade after Russia and Belarus participated. Resting places amid the ongoing war in Ukraine following the 2022 Russian invasion. At least eight other teams will boycott the ceremony and other countries will not send officials.

“We have decided that the German team paralympic games will not participate in the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremony in Verona,” This was stated by the German Paralympic Committee in a statement. “This decision serves both to focus on the upcoming competitions and to respectfully express our solidarity with the Ukrainian delegation.”

“Paralympic athletes embody courage, determination and the ability to overcome challenges. Especially in difficult times, it remains our shared responsibility to visibly embody Paralympic values ​​and resolutely protect the integrity of the sport.”

He said German para-athletes would continue to participate in pre-recorded segments that will be broadcast during the opening ceremony.

The International Paralympic Committee expects a record number of athletes at the Games (more than 600) and final confirmation will be made in the coming days.

Among the registered competitors, 10 are from Russia and Belarus after the Paralympic committees of both nations lifted all sanctions against them in September 2025.

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Another scandal for curling, this time at the Paralympic Games.

Two stones that were going to be used in the wheelchair curling event that began on Wednesday at the Milan Cortina Paralympic Games have been stolen. The incident came a couple of weeks after the sport made headlines during the Olympics, when the Canadian team was accused of cheating.

World Curling told The News that local authorities were investigating the circumstances that led to the theft of the granite rocks from the Olympic Curling Stadium.

“The set’s replacement stones are now being used and have been brought to the same specifications as the rest of the set, so there has been no impact on the competition,” World Curling said in an email.

The Milan Cortina Paralympic Games will officially begin with the opening ceremony on Friday, but the wheelchair curling schedule began on Wednesday.

The Olympic scandal shook the usually quiet world of curling, a sport that tends to go unnoticed outside of the Olympic Games.

In the round-robin phase in Cortina, Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Marc Kennedy, Canada’s second jumper, of touching the rock twice after initially releasing it on the ice sheet. Kennedy responded with an expletive-filled outburst. Canada was cleared of wrongdoing and ultimately won its first gold in men’s curling since the 2014 Sochi Games.

The Canadian women’s team had also been charged with the same double-touch violation.

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The 2026 Winter Olympics officially began with a colorful display in Italy.

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Athletes continue to fight for gold at the Milan Cortina Games this week.

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Seven decades later, the world’s winter sports showcase returns to the Italian mountain city.

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They helped us forget everything else.

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The Paralympic Games will open amid tensions in the Middle East and boycott of the ceremonies

VERONA, Italy (AP) — The Milan Cortina Paralympic Winter Games will officially open later Friday amid war tensions in the Middle East and with some countries planning to boycott the opening ceremony over the return of the Russian flag to the world sporting stage.

Ukraine heads the list of countries that will not attend the opening ceremony in Verona to protest the decision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to allow Russian athletes to compete under their own flag and with their national anthem. The Russian flag has not flown at the Paralympic Games since the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, while the national anthem has not been heard at any Olympic or Paralympic Games since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.

The opening ceremony will take place at the Arena di Verona, marking the first time that a Paralympic ceremony has been held at a UNESCO World Heritage site. The former Arena has been modernized with new wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms along with other safety improvements.

The Milan Cortina Games mark the 50th anniversary of the Paralympic Winter Games. More than 600 athletes will compete in 79 events in six sports. These are the most important Paralympic Winter Games in history, with a record female participation, according to the IPC.

Para-cross-country skier Aboulfazl Khatibi is expected to be the only athlete from Iran to participate in the Games that begin less than a week after the United States and Israel launched their military attack.

Khatibi was announced as Iran’s flag bearer, but he will not actually carry the flag: the task will be given to volunteers from all nations because not all flag bearers will be able to attend the ceremony due to logistics and training issues.

Many athletes will miss the opening ceremony as they are in different competition groups across Italy. Curling tryouts began Wednesday.

China arrives seeking to consolidate itself as the main Paralympic power. The Chinese have topped the medal table at the Summer Paralympics since 2004, and four years ago they topped the Winter Games for the first time with a record-breaking performance.

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Paralympic Games boss reveals why Russia and Belarus are back in the games

The participation of Russia and Belarus in the Paralympic Games was the result of a democratic process, the president of the International Paralympic Committee, Andrew Parsons, said on Thursday, a day before the opening ceremony.

Russia and Belarus will have a combined total of 10 athletes at the Games in Italy, competing only in skiing and snowboarding events.

Both countries were banned from Paralympic competitions after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but were admitted back into the IPC in September following a vote by the organisation’s general assembly.

As they were still prohibited by the winter sports federations, both nations obtained places for these paralympic games after winning a Court of Arbitration for Sport appeal against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) in December.

The IPC announced the decision to award the 10 places last month, during the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, provoking the ire of several countries.

“I recognize that this decision has not been well received in some parts of the world,” Parsons said at a news conference. “I want to emphasize that the IPC is a democratic global organization whose decisions on member suspensions are determined by its members.”

Several nations have decided to skip Friday’s opening ceremony parade following the readmission of Russia and Belarus, to show solidarity with Ukraine.

“We can’t choose when to be democratic based on the outcome of general assembly decisions,” Parsons said. “It was a democratic process carried out in accordance with the procedure set out in the IPC statutes. 177 of our 211 member organizations were present to vote.”

The Games have also been affected by the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, and the conflict has affected travel, including for athletes and teams bound for Italy.

“The IPC is currently monitoring the situation and continues to collect, confirm and evaluate available information to determine the impact on these Games and the broader Paralympic movement,” Parsons said.

“We recognize that the situation affects not only the National Paralympic Committees competing in the Games, but also our membership in general.”

The IPC will have a record 612 athletes from 56 delegations at the Games which run until March 15. Friday’s opening ceremony will take place in the ancient Roman arena in Verona, about 170 kilometers (106 miles) east of Milan.

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This country is expected to absolutely dominate the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — The Paralympic Winter Games come to Milan Cortina to celebrate its 50th anniversary, with China seeking to extend its dominance as a Paralympic power and Ukraine and other nations boycotting the opening ceremony over the return of the Russian flag and anthem.

The Games will officially begin on Friday amid war tensions in the Middle East, which caused travel difficulties for some of the nations arriving in Italy due to widespread flight disruptions. Iran was supposed to have a skier in Milan Cortina.

Wheelchair curling kicked off the competition schedule on Wednesday and the sport was quickly hit by another scandal when two stones were stolen from the Olympic Curling Stadium. During the Olympics, the Canadian team was accused of cheating.

The Paralympic Games are back in Italy 20 years after Turin 2006. It will be the 14th edition of the Paralympic Winter Games since the inaugural edition in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden, in 1976. Nearly 200 athletes competed in two sports at that time. Some 660 athletes will participate in the six sports in Italy from Friday to March 15.

The United States will send a 72-member team to Italy, up from the 67-member roster it brought to Beijing 2022. This year’s delegation includes Oksana Masters, the most decorated American Winter Paralympic athlete, and 16-year-old Paraalpine skier Meg Gustafson.

The Russian flag returns

Russian athletes will compete under their own flag at the Paralympic Games for the first time in more than a decade, and the country’s national anthem could be played for gold medalists for the first time on the stage of a major global sporting event since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Russian flag has not flown at the Paralympic Games since the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, while the national anthem has not been heard at any Olympic or Paralympic Games since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.

It could be the first time the anthem has been played on stage at a major global sporting event in four years.

Ukraine was the first to announce that it planned to boycott the opening ceremony because of Russia, and seven other nations planned not to attend for political reasons: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and the Netherlands.

Some other nations will not attend the opening ceremony to allow their athletes to rest before their competitions, not as a boycott.

Germany criticized the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to grant athletes from Russia and Belarus invitations to participate in Milan Cortina.

“The German Paralympic team will not participate in the Parade of Nations during the opening ceremony in Verona. This decision serves both to focus on the upcoming competitions and to respectfully express our solidarity with the Ukrainian delegation,” the German team said.

Russian athletes and athletes from Russia’s close ally Belarus received IPC spots on February 17.

The Russian and Belarusian athletes had been competing as individual neutral athletes without their flag, anthem or team colors.

Russian athletes were initially suspended due to a state-sponsored doping program, and sanctions have continued since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s sports minister Matvii Bidnyi had said in a social media post that the nation “will not participate in any further official Paralympic events.”

The IPC said most teams were already in Europe for training, but it was helping others travel amid the war in the Middle East.

Chinese dominance

The Milan Cortina Games will give China the opportunity to establish itself as the nation to beat in both the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games.

The Chinese have led the medal tally at the Summer Paralympics since 2004, and four years ago they won the Winter Games for the first time with a record performance that included 18 gold, 20 silver and 23 bronze medals.

China had more than 90 Para athletes competing at its home Games in 2022, the most ever recorded by any nation, and is sending another large delegation to Italy this time. It will feature 70 athletes competing in Italy, which will constitute the largest overseas delegation in its history.

Norway is the most successful nation at the Paralympic Winter Games, ahead of the United States and Austria. China is 14th on the all-time medal table, but has competed in less than half of the Games involving Norway, the United States and Austria since the first Paralympic Winter Games in Ornskoldsvik.

China’s push to dominate the Winter Paralympics received a boost when it was chosen to host the Beijing Games, where it won 60 more medals than the single it won in PyeongChang in 2018.

Momentum continued after the local Games, with government funding still available for Paralympic programs and promoting changes on several fronts, including new laws for people with disabilities to encourage their access to sports.

“China has developed hundreds of disability sports instructors and coaches with government funding since they began investing in Paralympic sports. They trained coaches for mass participation and have been training coaches for elite sports,” said NaRi Shin, assistant professor of sports management at the University of Michigan.

“They have Para national games and regional games within the country’s borders, but they also had the Olympic Games in 2008 and the Winter Games in 2022, so they have maintained the series of competitions so that these athletes that they trained have the experience of competing at the highest level,” said Shin, who is an expert in sports development and how East Asian countries have invested in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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Athletes’ arrival at the Paralympic Games is thrown into chaos by Trump’s war against Iran

Iran’s ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel has led to the postponement of sporting events in several countries, while competitions elsewhere have been affected by travel disruptions, with thousands of flights canceled at some of the world’s busiest transit hubs.

The International Paralympic Committee said it is working to find solutions after several athletes had difficulty traveling to the Milan Cortina Paralympic Winter Games due to travel disruptions at several Middle East airports.

“The closure of airspace in the Middle East is affecting the arrival of some interested parties… we are working diligently with Milano Curtain 2026 to find solutions for those affected,” the IPC said on Tuesday.

Mattia Ozbot via Getty Images

Paralympics opening ceremony grows sparser as Russia boycott grows

German athletes will not participate in the team parade in Milano Cortina paralympic games opening ceremony on Friday, in order to express solidarity with Ukraine, the German Paralympic Committee said on Wednesday.

Germany is the latest nation to skip the opening ceremony parade after Russia and Belarus were given spots to participate amid the ongoing war in Ukraine following the Russian invasion in 2022. At least eight other teams will boycott the ceremony and other countries will not send officials.

“We have decided that the German team paralympic games “We will not participate in the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremony in Verona,” the German Paralympic Committee said in a statement. “This decision serves both to focus on the upcoming competitions and to respectfully express our solidarity with the Ukrainian delegation.”

“Paralympic athletes embody courage, determination and the ability to overcome challenges. Especially in difficult times, it remains our shared responsibility to visibly embody Paralympic values ​​and resolutely protect the integrity of sport.”

He said German para-athletes would continue to participate in pre-recorded segments that will be broadcast during the opening ceremony.

The International Paralympic Committee expects a record number of athletes at the Games (more than 600) and final confirmation will be made in the coming days.

Among the registered competitors, 10 are from Russia and Belarus after the Paralympic committees of both nations lifted all sanctions against them in September 2025.

Mattia Ozbot via Getty Images

Paralympic Winter Games shaken by curling stone theft scandal

Another scandal for curling, this time at the Paralympic Games.

Two stones that were going to be used in the wheelchair curling event that began on Wednesday at the Milan Cortina Paralympic Games have been stolen. The incident came a couple of weeks after the sport made headlines during the Olympics, when the Canadian team was accused of cheating.

World Curling told The News that local authorities were investigating the circumstances that led to the theft of the granite rocks from the Olympic Curling Stadium.

“The set’s replacement stones are now being used and have been brought to the same specifications as the rest of the set, so there has been no impact on the competition,” World Curling said in an email.

The Milan Cortina Paralympic Games will officially begin with the opening ceremony on Friday, but the schedule d Wheelchair curling began Wednesday.

The Olympic scandal shook the usually quiet world of curling, a sport that tends to go unnoticed outside of the Olympic Games.

In the round-robin phase in Cortina, Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Marc Kennedy, Canada’s second jumper, of touching the rock twice after initially releasing it on the ice sheet. Kennedy responded with an expletive-filled outburst. Canada was cleared of wrongdoing and ultimately won its first gold in men’s curling since the 2014 Sochi Games.

The Canadian women’s team had also been charged with the same double-touch violation.