Turkish Curling Continues To Roll

The World Mixed Doubles Qualification Event has wrapped up in Dumfries, Scotland.

Twenty-six mixed doubles pairings competed in this open-entry event. The teams were divided into four groups and each group played a round robin prior to the playoffs, which offered a total of four berths into the 2023 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship, to be held from April 22-29 in Gangneung, Korea.

At the end of the round robin, the top two teams from each group qualified for the playoffs. Those pairs were China and France (Group A), from Group B New Zealand and Netherlands, from Group C Finland and Austria, and Spain and Türkiye in Group D.

The first round of playoffs saw Austria’s Hannah Augustin and Martin Reichel defeat China (13-10) and Türkiye (9-3), while Spain’s Oihane Otaegi and Mikel Unanue beat France (9-2) and Netherlands (9-7). This gave Austria and Spain the first berths into the world championship.

In the second playoff session of the day, New Zealand took two in the final end to beat China by a 6-5 count and Finland beat France 10-4 to give themselves an opportunity to claim one of the two remaining worlds places. The results eliminated China and France from the competition.

The four teams that had a 1-1 won/loss loss record from the playoff stage played one final qualifying game to earn a berth: Netherlands met New Zealand, while Finland played Türkiye.

Netherlands’ Lisenka Bomas and Wouter Goesgens defeated the Kiwis 8-7 in an extra-end, while Türkiye’s Dilsat Yildiz and Bilal Omer Cakir stole the eighth end from Finland for a 6-5 victory to claim the final worlds berths.

The results see the continued rise of Turkish high-performance curling, which took major leaps last fall and also in March of this year.

The world mixed doubles qualification, plus the performance of Türkiye’s men’s fours at the recent European Championships—which qualified them for their first world men’s titleshoot in the new year—means that Turkish curling will be represented at three world championships in the same season for the first time.