2024 World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship kicks off Sunday in South Korea

Twenty-one teams from around the world, including Canada, are set compete this week at the 2024 World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship at Gangneung Curling Centre in Gangneung, South Korea.

Team Canada will be represented by Collinda Joseph (Stittsville, Ont.) and Dennis Thiessen (Sanford, Man.). The Canadian duo will be supported in Gangneung by head coach Dana Ferguson, team leader Kyle Turcotte, physiotherapist Alysia Patience, and team physician Dr. Gordon Ngo.

Joseph and Thiessen are familiar faces for Canada on the international para curling scene: Joseph is a Paralympic bronze medalist (Beijing 2022) and world wheelchair silver medalist (2020), while Thiessen is a three-time Paralympic medalist (gold, Sochi 2014; bronze, PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022) and two-time world wheelchair medalist (gold, 2013; silver, 2020). The pair also won bronze at last year’s world wheelchair mixed doubles championship in Richmond, B.C.

The defending world wheelchair mixed doubles champion, Latvia, will look to repeat its golden performance as Agris Lasmans and Polina Rozkova return as its representatives. Lasmans and Rozkova were part of the Latvian team that placed fifth at last week’s four-person world championship.

This year’s tournament will be the third world wheelchair mixed doubles championship since its inception in 2022.

Three groups of seven teams shape the 21-team championship, as follows:

• Group A: Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, Turkey
• Group B: Canada, England, Finland, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland, United States
• Group C: China, Denmark, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden

Each group will play a full six-game round robin within itself. The top eight teams across all groups will qualify for playoffs.

Here is the round robin schedule for Team Canada (all times ET):

• Sunday, 11:30 p.m. – vs. Switzerland
• Monday, 6:30 a.m. – vs. Slovenia
• Tuesday, 3 a.m. – vs. Italy
• Tuesday, 11:30 p.m. – vs. Finland
• Wednesday, 6:30 a.m. – vs. England
• Thursday, 6:30 a.m. – vs. United States

The gold and bronze medal games take place Friday at 9 p.m. ET.

The event takes place at the Gangneung Curling Centre in Gangneung, South Korea, a 3,500-seat multi-purpose venue that hosted the curling competitions during the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, as well as numerous other international curling championships. It also hosted last week’s 2024 World Wheelchair Curling Championship when Team Canada earned silver.

All games will be available to watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@curling1.

For live scores, standings, and statistics for the 2024 World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship, go to https://livescores.worldcurling.org/wwhcc/.

This story will be available in French as soon as possible at https://www.curling.ca/category-all-posts-fr/?lang=fr.