Team Menard aims for Canadian threepeat at World Mixed Curling Championship

Canada will once again have its sights upon the top of the global podium as the 2022 World Mixed Curling Championship, set to take place Oct. 15-22 at Curl Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The mixed championship, which had been cancelled in both 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 precautions, makes its return to open the World Curling Federation’s championship schedule for the 2022-2023 season.

Representing Canada at the event will be the 2021 Canadian mixed champions team Québec, composed of skip Jean-Michel Ménard, third Marie-France Larouche, second Ian Belleau, lead Annie Lemay and coach Eric Sylvain (Etchemin/Des Collines). They defeated Ontario’s Mike McClean (Ottawa) by a 5-4 score in an extra end to claim the Canadian mixed championship title at Canmore, Alta., in November 2021.

Team Canada brings an astounding amount of national and international experience to the table. Ménard is the 2006 World Men’s silver medallist and 2001 Canadian mixed champion, while Larouche and Lemay won the silver medal at the 2006 Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the bronze at the 2009 Scotties as a unit. Larouche is also the 1999 World Women’s Junior bronze medallist.

The four players boast a collective 30 total Canadian national championship appearances at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Tim Hortons Brier.

The event features a deep 35-team field divided into four groups. Canada will be in group A alongside Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia and South Korea.

Each group plays a round-robin with round-robin play starting on Saturday, Oct. 15 and continuing until Thursday, Oct. 20. 

At the end of the round robin, all teams qualified for the play-offs are ranked one to 12 in a merged group ranking system. The four group winners advance directly to the quarterfinal games.

Teams placed second and third in each group will play qualification games on Friday, Oct. 21 at 5 a.m. (all times Eastern) to determine the last four teams in the playoffs.

The quarterfinals will take place on Friday at 1 p.m.

The winners of the quarterfinals will play in the semifinals on Saturday morning at 4:30 a.m. The medal games will take place on Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m.

Since the World Mixed Championship’s inception in 2015, Canada sits atop the global leaderboard in total medals with three, including gold in 2019 (skip Colin Kurz. Manitoba) and 2018 (skip Michael Anderson, Ontario). Canada also won silver in 2017 (skip Trevor Bonot, Northern Ontario).

Draw, live scoring, rosters and more information are available here: https://worldcurling.org/events/wmxcc2022

World Curling TV will provide static camera coverage of all games on the Curling Channel.