17 April 2023
World Mixed Doubles Championship set to begin in Gangneung, Korea
World championship curling returns to Korea, and the site of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games, when the World Mixed Doubles Championship 2023 takes place in the Gangneung Curling Centre from 22–29 April.
World Curling TV will be broadcasting games on the Curling Channel. For broadcast details click here.
This will be the 15th edition of this championship, since the inaugural event was held in Vierumaki, Finland in 2008.
Altogether 20 teams representing their national Member Associations have qualified for the competition. Divided into two round-robin groups, the 20 teams are:
Group A: Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Korea, Netherlands and Scotland
Group B: Austria, England, Spain, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and United States.
Among these teams, in Group A:
- Australia – represented by Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt, who became their country’s first curling Olympians at the Beijing Winter Games 2022.
- Canada – represented by wife and husband duo of Olympic champion Jennifer Jones and three-times world champion Brent Laing.
- Estonia – represented for the sixth time by Marie Kaldvee and Harri Lill, with a best finish so far of fifth place in 2019.
- Italy – represented by reigning mixed doubles Olympic champion Stefania Constantini and partner Sebastiano Arman.
- Scotland – represented by 2021 world mixed doubles champions Jennifer Dodds and Bruce Mouat.
In Group B:
- Spain – represented by Oihane Otaegi and Mikel Unanue, who are making a fourth appearance, with a best finish so far of ninth place in 2019.
- Germany – represented by Pia-Lisa Schoell and Klaudius Harsch, bronze medallists last year.
- Switzerland – represented by newly-crowned world women’s champion Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann and husband world men’s bronze medallist Yannick Schwaller.
- Türkiye – represented by women’s team skip Dilsat Yildiz and partner Bilal Omer Cakir.
- United States – represented by world mixed doubes bronze medallist from 2019 Cory Thiesse and her partner Korey Dropkin, who is making a third appearance.
Round-robin play starts on Saturday 22 April and continues until Thursday 27 April, and it will determine the top three teams from each group, who will move onto the play-offs.
Both group leaders will qualify direct for the semi-finals, while the second and third teams from Group A will play the third and second teams from Group B in qualification games, with the winners also proceeding to the semi-finals. Qualification games, relegation games and semi-finals will take place on Friday 28 April.
The bronze medal game and the gold medal final will be staged on Saturday 29 April, at 10:00 and at 14:00, respectively.
The teams finishing at the bottom of each group will be relegated to next season’s World Mixed Doubles Qualification Event.
Above that, there will be relegation games that will see the second-bottom team of Group A playing the third-bottom team of Group B, as well as the second-bottom team from Group B playing the third-bottom team from Group A.
The winners of these games will become the last two teams to qualify directly for next year’s championship, while the losers will move onto next season’s World Mixed Doubles Qualification Event.
All times are KST (Korea Standard Time) which is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) +9 hours.
For the full playing schedule, click here.
About Mixed Doubles
Mixed Doubles – curling’s 21st-century discipline – made its Olympic debut at the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games 2018.
Instead of playing in teams of four, mixed doubles curling is for teams of two players – one male and one female (no alternate player is allowed).
The game is played on the same sheets of ice as “traditional” curling, with some differences, including:
- Teams have only six stones each (instead of eight) and one of those stones, from each team, is prepositioned before each end starts.
- Player one delivers the first and last stones and player two plays the second, third and fourth stones. If they choose to, the two players may swap positions from one end to the next.
- Sweeping can be done by both team members.
- Each team receives 22 minutes of thinking time and games are fixed at 8 ends. If games are tied after 8 ends, extra end(s) will be played with three minutes of thinking time added for each extra end.
At the same time as the World Mixed Doubles Championship, the World Senior Curling Championships 2023 are being staged at the nearby Gangneung Hockey Centre, featuring 15 women’s teams and 24 men’s teams.
Engage with the World Curling Federation in the lead up to the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2023 on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Weibo and be searching the hashtags #curling #WMDCC2023
