International curling will return to the Kisakallio Sports Institute in Lohja, Finland when they play host to the World Junior-B Curling Championships 2022 and the World Qualification Event 2022.
The World Junior-B Curling Championships 2022 will take place from Monday 3 January 2022 until Wednesday 12 January 2022 and is open to junior teams from all World Curling Federation Member Associations that have not already qualified for the World Junior Curling Championships. The top three women’s and men’s teams will qualify from this event to the World Junior Curling Championships.
The World Qualification Event 2022 will take place from Monday 17 January 2022 until Saturday 22 January 2022 and is for eight women’s and eight men’s teams — one host, one Americas team, two Pacific-Asia teams and four European teams. The winners and runners-up qualify for the respective women’s and men’s World Curling Championships.
The venue has hosted the Junior-B event four times previously — 2016, 2018 and 2019. This will also be the second time it has hosted the World Qualification Event after previously hosting the championships in 2020.
The venue has most recently hosted the World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship 2020 that was delayed until April 2021.
World Curling Federation President, Kate Caithness said: “We are delighted to be taking two more of our championships to the Kisakallio Sports Institute in Lohja. The organising committee have become important partners to us in recent years and are very experienced in hosting our events. After the successful Wheelchair-B event in April, we have every confidence in their ability to host a series of COVID-secure and first-class championships.”
Finnish Curling Association President, Jari Turto said: “We are very glad and excited that the World Curling Federation has again placed their trust in us and awarded two competitions to be hosted in Finland. We are confident that the years of experience hosting events in Kisakallio will guarantee these events to be successful. We are also very proud of the work done by our partner, the Kisakallio Sports Institute. It will be an exciting season leading up to the Olympics.”
Lauri Ikävalko, Kisakallio representative, said: “We are very happy that Kisakallio once again gets the opportunity to host two such great international events in the coming season. The World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship 2020 this spring was a great experience for us; it showed us we can run a successful event even during these challenging times with COVID-19 restrictions. So, we will do our very best to make sure all goes smoothly next season as well and hope that the players and all the people involved in the competition will enjoy their stay and competition experience with us.”
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