11 March 2024
World Women’s to begin in Sydney, Canada
The international curling spotlight turns to Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada on Saturday 16 March, when the BKT Tires World Women’s Curling Championship 2024 gets underway.
The event will be staged in Centre 200, an arena which can hold 5,000 fans and is located in downtown Sydney on the island of Cape Breton.
While Canada is no stranger to hosting World Curling championships, this is a first world women’s championship to take place in Nova Scotia.
This will be the 45th world women’s championship, with the first held in Perth, Scotland in 1979. Altogether 13 of the top women’s teams will be representing their national Member Associations.
With Canada gaining participation as hosts, the other teams qualified through two different routes for this championship – by way of their performances in the Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships, held in November 2023 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and at the Pan Continental Championships, staged in Kelowna, Canada earlier in November 2023.
From the European Championships (in qualification order): Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Scotland, Estonia, Denmark and Türkiye
From the Pan Continental Championships (in qualification order): Korea, Japan, United States and New Zealand
As well as having world titles and medals on the line, this event is the first of two Olympic qualifier world championships. With Italy already qualified as hosts, altogether seven national Member Associations will qualify directly for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan-Cortina. The others will be eligible to compete at a Pre-Olympic Qualification Event and/or the final Olympic Qualification Event, held in the 2025–26 season.
Meet the teams
- Canada: the hosts will be skipped by Rachel Homan, world champion in 2017 and two-time Olympian
- Denmark: skipped by Madeleine Dupont, who will be making her 15th world championship appearance. This team won European gold in 2022
- Estonia: skipped by Liisa Turmann, who plays second stones – this is a second appearance by Estonia at this level. Liisa was also on the team that competed in 2021
- Italy: skipped by reigning Olympic mixed doubles champion Stefania Constantini, who led the team to fifth place last year
- Japan: skipped by Ueno Miyu, this is a first appearance for this team as they step up from the junior ranks
- Korea: skipped by Gim Eunji, who is making her fifth appearance having just missed out on medals with fourth-place finishes in 2012 and 2014
- New Zealand: this is a second appearance by a New Zealand team at this level – skip Jessica Smith led the team last year as well
- Norway: skipped by Marianne Roervik, who throws third stones – last year, they took silver
- Scotland: skipped by Rebecca Morrison, this team includes current Olympic champion Jennifer Dodds – this is a third world championship appearance by Morrison
- Sweden: skipped by Anna Hasselborg, this team were Olympic champions in 2018 and have been world silver medallists twice
- Switzerland: the defending champions are skipped by Silvana Tirinzoni – this team has won four successive world titles
- Türkiye: skipped by Dilsat Yildiz, who has skipped in both of Türkiye’s previous world championship appearances
- United States: skipped by Tabitha Peterson, with current world mixed doubles champion Cory Thiesse playing at third – this team finished seventh last year
There will be 20 sessions of round-robin play, commencing on Saturday 16 March and concluding on Friday 22 March. This will determine the top six-ranked teams. The teams ranked top and second will proceed directly to the semi-finals. For teams ranked third to sixth, qualification games will take place on Saturday 23 March (3rd v 6th and 4thv 5th). Semi-finals will follow on 23 March at 17:00.
The bronze medal game will take place on Sunday 24 March at 11:00 to be followed by the gold medal final at 17:00.
All times are Atlantic Daylight Time (ADT) which is UTC/GMT -3.
All games will be available to watch on The Curling Channel.
Find the full playing schedule here.
