World Mixed Doubles 2018 set to follow successful Olympic debut

  • Korea's Hyeji Jang and KiJeong Lee will compete in Oestersund, following the Olympics © WCF / Richard Gray

Oestersund, Sweden
Tuesday 17 April 2018

Following the successful debut of mixed doubles – curling’s abbreviated discipline – at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang in February, the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2018 will be held at the new Östersund Arena, in Oestersund, Sweden between 21 and 28 April.

The World Senior Curling Championships 2018 will also take place in the same venue, on the same dates.

This is the 11th edition of this event and the second time that both the mixed doubles and seniors have been staged together in Sweden, with Karlstad acting as host in 2016.

With a total of 40 teams involved, from Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America, the global popularity of mixed doubles continues. Among these, Guyana is making its first-ever international championship appearance, while Hong Kong is making a debut in this discipline.

Instead of playing in teams of four, mixed doubles curling is for teams of two players – one male and one female – with no alternate/spare player. The game is played on the same sheets of ice as team 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 of play 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 eight ends, three minutes of thinking time is added for each extra-end.

    The teams involved this year have been divided into five groups, based on a World Curling Federation ranking established over the last three years. They are:

    Group A: Australia, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and United States.
    Group B: Belarus, Croatia, Denmark, England, Hungary, Norway, Romania and Turkey.
    Group C: Estonia, Finland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland and Russia.
    Group D: China, Spain, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Scotland, Slovakia and Sweden.
    Group E: Austria, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Guyana, Ireland and Korea.

    Round-robin play gets underway on Saturday 21 April and continues until Thursday 26 April. After this, the 16 top-ranked teams will play in a head-to-head format, starting on Friday 27 April. Winners will continue to the quarter-finals and onwards to the rankings and medal games on Saturday 28 April.

    Live coverage from the event will be available on the World Curling Federation YouTube channel www.youtube.com/worldcurlingtv

    For the broadcast schedule, team information and the most up-to-date news from the competition visit www.worldcurling.org/wmdcc2018

    To engage with the World Curling Federation on social media in the build to the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2018 follow it on Twitter, Instagram (@worldcurling) and Facebook (/WorldCurlingFederation) and use the hashtags when posting: #WMDCC2018 #curling