CORTINA D’AMPEZZO – An inexperienced American side made a critical error Friday at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.
Brad Jacobs and his veteran Canadian teammates took full advantage.
After the Americans pumped their fists when Daniel Casper made a nice freeze in the fourth end, Jacobs answered with a highlight-reel shot that helped send the Canadians on their way to a 6-3 victory.
“When a team makes a good shot and celebrates like they’re going to steal when there’s another shot to come, that’s a mistake,” Jacobs said. “If anything that just motivates you to want to make something back on them and shut them up, and we did. That was a big deuce.”
With vice Marc Kennedy calling line while Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert worked the brooms, Jacobs navigated a tight port to chip a rock sideways just enough to move an American stone off the button.
“It was amazing … not a lot of guys out here are making that shot,” Hebert said.
Kennedy said the Americans did well to prevent an easy three-point end for Canada.
“That thing was completely buried,” he said. “Once (Jacobs) makes that shot, it just changes the whole tone of the game. You just breed more confidence into your skip. The team was just rolling after that.
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“That shot probably helped us settle into the whole Games really.”
Casper’s side is making its Olympic debut while all four Canadians have been to at least one Games.
Jacobs was the last Canadian skip to win Olympic men’s team gold in 2014. Hebert and Kennedy won gold in 2010 and Gallant took bronze in 2022.
It felt like a soccer derby at times at the 3,450-seat venue with the near-capacity crowd in full voice. Joel Retornaz of host Italy guided his team to a 9-7 win over Great Britain’s Bruce Mouat on the sheet beside the Canadians.
Spectators stomped on the grandstands, bellowed chants, honked horns and didn’t let up for most of the two hour-plus morning session. The raucous atmosphere — definitely not the norm at a traditional bonspiel — forced players to use hand signals at times to communicate.
“My voice will be gone by tomorrow probably,” Kennedy said. “So it’s a factor but so far it hasn’t affected us negatively.”
Depending on the host city and strength of the home side, Olympic curling events can draw more general sports fans rather than regular curling spectators.
With Italy a medal contender, it should be a hot barn for the duration.
“You get shivers down your spine,” said Canadian coach Paul Webster. “We missed a shot or two out there for sure because we couldn’t talk. But everyone is going to have that this week and we wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
It got so loud on some occasions that the local sports production crew flashed a “Quiet Please” graphic on the big screens around the rink. It had little — if any — effect.
“It’s probably the loudest I’ve ever heard,” said retired Canadian curler Glenn Howard, who’s coaching Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller, a 7-3 winner over Czechia’s Lukas Klima.
“What an atmosphere,” he added. “If you don’t enjoy this, there’s something wrong with you.”
In the other game, Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell topped China’s Xiaoming Xu 8-6.
Casper, who shot 67 per cent on his draws, settled for a single in the fifth end when his final rock slid past the eight-foot ring.
Jacobs made back-to-back draws in the eighth for a steal of two and iced the win by holding the U.S. to one point in the ninth end.
“That was a well-managed game with a lot of crowd noise,” Webster said. “That’s one of the games this week that we really wanted to win.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
