Muirhead Attempts Curling Quadruple

“Geneva is a lovely place to finish off a memorable season.” 

That’s Eve Muirhead, in her latest column for Scotland’s The Courier, setting up tomorrow’s start of the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship. 

She and teammates Bobby Lammie—second man for Team Bruce Mouat—defeated defending world champs Mouat and Muirhead’s Olympic women’s champion teammate Jen Dodds in Scotland to earn the flights to Switzerland, and it’s a fresh opportunity for the youthful veteran. 

“Obviously the World Mixed Doubles hasn’t been around for that long—this will be the 14th championships—but it’s becoming a bigger and bigger part of the curling calendar,” wrote Muirhead. 

“It’s also an opportunity for me to complete the set of the major gold medals—European, World, Olympics and World Mixed.” 

The championship offers 20 nations in total—in two round-robin pools of 10 teams—getting underway April 23 and finishing on April 30. 

Facing Muirhead/Lammie in Pool B is Canada’s Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant  (silver medals in 2019), Australia’s Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt, USA’s Rebecca and Matt Hamilton, former champions Ildiko Szekeres and Gyorgy Nagy of Hungary and Turkey’s Dilsat Yildiz, who is paired with Mikel Unanue. 

Pool A includes the host nation’s Alina Paetz and Sven Michel, Sweden’s Wraana siblings, Isabella and Rasmus, Norway’s Maia ad Magnus Ramsfjell, and the Olympic mixed doubles champion from Italy, Stefania Constantini.

Constantini was scheduled to compete with Beijing teammate Amos Mosaner, but he has been replaced by Mosaner’s men’s teammate Sebastiano Arman.

Mosaner sustained a minor knee injury over the Easter weekend, while hiking with his dog. Constantini is expected to take more of a leadership role on this new team.

Both group leaders will qualify direct for the semi-finals, while the second and third teams from Group A will play the third and second teams from Group B in qualification games, with the winners also proceeding to the semi-finals. 

The teams finishing at the bottom of each group will be relegated to next season’s World Mixed Doubles Qualification event. 

Above that, there will be relegation games that will see the second-bottom team of Group A playing the third-bottom team of Group B, as well as the second-bottom team from Group B playing the third-bottom team from Group A. 

The winners of these games will become the last two of 16 teams to qualify directly for next year’s championship, while the losers will move on to next season’s qualification event. 

The championship has no Russian teams, following the World Curling Federation’s ruling in March that bans the member nation from competing at world championships for the duration of the 2021-22 season. 

The decision came the same day of another Muirhead The Courier column, in which she voiced support for such global actions.

“Looking at favourites overall, I’d have to say the Italians, who won Olympic gold without losing a game, the Swiss in their home country and Sweden would probably be my picks,” Muirhead recently wrote, prior to news of Mosaner’s injury.

“The quicker nature of the sport, the shorter format and prepositioning of stones can make it a bit more unpredictable. 

“But, as Italy showed in Beijing, the best team will win.” 

World Curling Television will broadcast 32 total matches from the championship, aired by broadcast partners around the world (Peacock/Olympic Channel in USA and TSN/RDS in Canada) as well as WCF’s The Curling Channel, which is available on the Recast platform.