The Pacific-Asia Curling Championships 2021 are set to begin this Sunday (7 November) at the Almaty Arena in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The championships are a qualifier for the World Championships 2022 and will run for the duration of the week, ending on Saturday (13 November).
This year, on the men’s side, eight teams will be playing for a single spot at the LGT World Men’s Curling Championship 2022 in Las Vegas, United States. The winner of the men’s gold medal game will secure their place, while the silver and bronze medal winners will qualify for the World Qualification Event 2022 in lohja, Finland.
For the women, there are two spots available to both the gold and silver medal winning teams to earn spots at the World Women’s Curling Championship 2022 in Prince George, Canada. The bronze and fourth place teams will qualify for the World Qualification Event 2022.
The championships will feature four women’s teams and seven men’s teams. They are:
Women: Hong Kong, Japan, hosts Kazakhstan and Nigeria Korea
Men: Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, hosts Kazakhstan, Korea, Qatar and Saudi Arabia
Korea’s Eun Jung Kim who won Olympic silver in 2018 will lead the field with Japan’s team skipped by Sayaka Yoshimura right behind. The hosts, Kazakhstan, will open their competition with a game against Korea in session two.
On the men’s side, the reigning Pacific-Asia champions from Korea, will once again be skipped by Chang-Min Kim, but with a new lineup. Japan’s most recent Olympic representatives, led by Yusuke Morizumi, will look to improve on their nation’s silver medal finish in 2019.
Format of play
The women’s teams will play a double round robin while the men will play a single round robin.
At the end of the round robin, teams ranked 1-4 will qualify for the play-offs. The team ranked first will play the fourth ranked team and the second ranked team will play the third in the semi-finals. The full round robin will conclude on Thursday (11 November).
The women’s semi-finals will be played on Friday (12 November) at 14.00 while the men’s will be at 9.00 and 14.00. The bronze medal games will take place on Saturday (13 November) at 9.00 and the championship finals will be at 14.00.
In 2019, China women and Korea men won gold, with wins over Japan.
All times are Alma-Ata Time (ALMT) which is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) + 6 hours.
You can follow the work of the World Curling Federation on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Weibo and by searching the hashtag #curling #PACC2021
