15 March 2025
Play-off field complete at World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles
The fourth – and last – day of group play at the World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship in the Auchenharvie Leisure Centre featured five games in each group. At the start of the day all eight play-off spots were vacant, and by the end of it, all were taken.
Co-leaders of Group A‘s standings, Norway, played Switzerland in the afternoon in their sole game of the day. The Norwegians showed strong form and won, 11-4. With this win, they also secured their place in the play-offs.
After the game, Norway’s Geir Arne Skogstad said, “It’s awesome! It’s way over what we expected before we came here for the mixed doubles, since we have never played mixed doubles before. So this is just awesome!”
His teammate, Mia Larsen Sveberg added, “Yes, really fun! I had no idea what we could be able to do. So, this is fun for the first time in worlds.”
Switzerland had another game in the evening, against Brazil. The Swiss won that one, 8-5, mostly due to a score of three in the fourth and a steal of three in the fifth.
The other co-leaders of the group’s rankings, United States played their only game of the day in the evening against Japan. United States were leading the game, 4-3, at the break. However, Japan played an excellent second half and eventually won, 8-7. With this win, Japan made it to the play-offs. Earlier in the day, Japan had won their game against Finland, 11-3.
China were sitting with three wins and two losses on the third place of the rankings, heading into Friday’s action. They won their only game of the day, 14-1 against Brazil to give themselves the best chance to earn a play-off spot. However, at the end of the day, it turned out that they came fourth in their group and didn’t make it to the play-offs.
Group B‘s leaders, so-far undefeated Canada had two games on Friday. They played 2023 world champions, Latvia in the morning and won, 9-3, in six ends. With this win, Canada became the first team to qualify for the play-offs.
Afterwards, Ina Forrest said, “It’s always a big moment when you sit Q, so we’re super-super happy to have that part done. We’d like to be top of our pool to put us in the best position, going into play-offs. So, hopefully we’ll have another good game against Denmark.”
And this is exactly what happened when they played the Danish team in the afternoon. Canada won, 9-4, to keep their unbeaten record intact and finish their round-robin campaign on top of their group.
With all other results in the group, Czechia qualified for the play-offs by the end of the morning, even though they were not playing in the morning session.
Later in the day, the Czechs met Italy in their last game in the group stage. Eva Homolova and Radek Musilek were leading the game by 5-2 at the break, but Italy switched gears in the second half and eventually won, 9-5.
Afterwards, Musilek talked about their play-off qualification, saying, “In the beginning it was our goal to qualify, we hoped for it, but we changed one member of the team last minute, so we thought that we can do it, but it will be hard. And we did it, so we are happy!”
Latvia wanted to finished their round-robin campaign with a win when they met Poland in the late afternoon. The Latvians showed strong form and won that game, 11-1.
Earlier the Polish duo had lost against Estonia, 6-8. With this win, Estonia finished their round-robin campaign in third place and eventually qualified for the play-off stage.
In Group C, table-toppers, Korea had two games on Friday. In the morning, they played Spain and won, 9-1. With this win, the Koreans secured their play-off spot. In the evening, they finished their group-stage campaign strong with another win, this time against England, 11-10. Earlier, England had won against Hungary, 8-7, by scoring four in the last end.
In the afternoon, Slovakia needed a win against Türkiye to keep their play-off dreams alive. Monika Kunkelova and Radoslav Duris played an excellent game and won, 9-5, in seven ends.
Hosts Scotland were sitting in joint second position – with Slovakia – at the end of Thursday with their play-off hopes alive. Charlotte McKenna and Hugh Nibloe won their only game of the day, 9-6 against Spain. With this victory, Scotland secured a place in the play-offs, and afterwards, Hugh Nibloe said, “Feeling great! Slow start to the game, managed to bounce back from it, absolute delight! I was struggling quite a bit, so Charlotte was the hero of the day.”
Earlier in the day, Slovakia beat Türkiye, 9-5. At the end of the last session, it turned out the Slovakia finished third in the group and qualified for the play-offs.
The teams who qualified for the play-offs (in order) are: Korea, Norway, Canada, Czechia, Scotland, Japan, Estonia and Slovakia.
The quarter-final pairings are: Korea versus Slovakia, Czechia versus Scotland, Canada versus Japan and Norway versus Estonia.
The quarter-finals will be held on Saturday 15 March at 10:00. The winners of the quarter-finals will play in the semi-finals at 17:00 on Saturday. The winners of the semi-finals will play in the gold medal game, the losers of the semi-finals will meet in the bronze medal game. Both medal games will take place on Sunday 16 March. The bronze medal game is set for 10:00, the gold medal final will take place at 14:00.
All times are GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) which is the same as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Find all the results from the championship here.
The final round-robin standings are available here.
Broadcast information about the event can be found here.
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