All the fears have been laid to rest
Today is the eight-year anniversary of mixed doubles curling achieving medal status at the Olympic Winter Games.
The announcement was made on June 8, 2015 following an IOC Executive Board meeting held in Lausanne, Switzerland. Three other winter sport disciplines were approved—big air snowboarding, mass start speed skating and a team skiing event—and to make room, the IOC voted to drop the snowboard parallel slalom event.
Mixed doubles had been previously rejected prior to the Vancouver 2010 Games.
Curling fans and administrators were optimistic heading into the 2015 vote, and there was a general sense of celebration afterward. Some top curling athletes, however, weren’t sure of immediate Olympic success—PyeongChang 2018 would feature the discipline in just three years, and some wondered if, among other things, the players would be ready.
It’s fun to track the online opinions from that time, given the success of mixed doubles curling at two successive Olympics.
Håvard Vad Petersson of Norway kicked it off, eight years ago, with a Facebook post:
Mixed doubles will be included at the 2018 Olympics.
I have so many worries about this that I don’t know where to start!
I do really hope that in 20 years I can look back and say that I was being conservative and wrong.
Vad Petterson commented further:
I enjoy a good curling game. I’ve never enjoyed a mixed doubles game. Hopefully the Olympics will take the game to a decent level. But to me curling includes sweeping, teamwork and shotmaking.
Two of Sweden’s four-player women’s champions from the PyeongChang Games, Anna Hasselborg and Agnes Knochenhauer, were among 18 respondents who liked Vad Petersson’s latter comment at the time. That group included German national coach Uli Kapp.
Kapp’s brother Andy, who skipped their men’s team at various global championships through the 1990s and 2000s, begged to differ.
“I think it’s a fantastic chance to let our sport grow in the world even faster now,” Kapp wrote in response. “More countries will jump into curling and the chances for reaching a medal will be spread out more and more. It is a different format of the game, but shotmaking, strategy and physical skill will still be the key to success.
“Excellence will come by itself. Whether we old fashioned curlers need it or not is not our task… it will be the decision of the next curling generation... and it’s great that they can choose.
Kapp continued:
I remember the time of being a second-class (non-Olympic) athlete and a medal at worlds and europeans was worth nothing outside the curling world... many curlers had tears of joy in their eyes at the closing ceremony in Kariuzawa 1998… now the second Olympic curling rocket will start exactly 20 years later. Let it fly and wish (all) the best of luck.
Some believed traditional four-player mixed curling should have received the Olympic nod.
“Regular Mixed would have been better than mixed doubles… but more curling in Olympics is better!” commented Vancouver 2010 champion Ben Hebert.
A newly-retired championship ice technician from Canada sounded a note of caution.
“Nothing like watching someone throw a rock, jump up and chase it down ice slip and fall and burn the rock,” wrote British Columbia’s Dave Merklinger. “That is real entertainment.”
Fortunately, such accidents have been few and far between. At PyeongChang, Russia’s Anastasia Bryzgalova had a fall but no stones were burned.
Bryzgalova and teammate Aleksandr Krushelnitckii fell even further after winning bronze—the pair soon lost their medal duo to a doping violation.
Another Russian had a worse fall four years earlier on home ice in Sochi, as Andrey Drozdov wiped out in a four-player men’s game against Switzerland.
But I digress.
The opinions from June 2015 also varied amongst athletes from curling’s powerhouse nations and the traditional “have nots.” One commenter made a clever point directly to Vad Petersson.
“Not sure it matters where you come from Havard: people said Kerry Packer didn’t have a product and look what he did,” wrote Scotland’s Kenny Thomson. “There are even stories out there that a guy called Thomas Ulsrud once said ‘there’s no way I’m wearing those” (or the Norwegian equivalent) and now look what your pants have done for the game!”
“So I think I agree with you that the product as it is, is probably not going to set the world alight, but as others have said, now the hard work has been done and the opportunity is there, why not grab it with both hands and make the most of it.”
Andy Kapp later returned to the conversation:
You will see that mixed doubles will make its own story, maybe there will be more changes to come… there will be curlers maybe only doing mixed doubles for their whole career.
Prophetic words, as a more competitors have indeed chosen to train and compete solely within the MD discipline.
Even yours truly weighed in.
“Television will have to figure out new ways to showcase this discipline,” I wrote. “Current strategies aren’t cutting it.
“Let’s give Håvard those 20 years to consider how it all plays out.”
So happy Olympic anniversary, mixed doubles curling fans. For his part, Vad Petersson revisited his 2015 post today with a mea culpa:
“I take it all back,” he wrote. “And it has only been eight years.”