VANCOUVER (World Curling Federation) – The 2009 World Junior Curling Championships begin Thursday March 5, featuring 20 teams – 10 male and 10 female – vying for global junior (under age 21) curling supremacy.
This will be the first major able-bodied competition hosted at the official curling venue of next year’s 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. The Vancouver Olympic Centre was recently host to the 2009 World Wheelchair Curling Championship, won by Canada (Jim Armstrong) over Sweden (Jalle Jungnell). Germany, skipped by Jens Jaeger, won the bronze.
Two-time defending gold medallist Eva Muirhead of Scotland leads the women’s field as she competes in her third straight World Junior Championship. Muirhead also qualified to represent Scotland at the upcoming World Women’s Championship in Gangneung, Korea, for which she will depart directly from Vancouver after the WJCC. It marks the first time in Scottish curling history that a skip has captured both the junior and women’s titles in the same season. Muirhead is only 18 years old.
The Scottish men’s team will be represented by Graeme Black.
Defending world junior men’s champion Chris Plys of the United States also returns for his fourth consecutive trip to the WJCC. The U.S. women’s team is skipped by Alexandra Carlson.
Sweden will be represented by Anna Hasselborg in women’s play and Oskar Eriksson, the 2008 world junior men’s silver medallist, in men’s play.
Hosts Canada will also field two teams, defending world bronze medallist Kaitlyn Lawes of Winnipeg, and Brett Gallant of Prince Edward Island.
Russia’s women’s squad will be skipped by Margarita Fomina, the alternate on the national women’s team, while the men’s team is skipped by Andrey Drozdov.
Representing China will be Jialing Zang, a member of the national men’s team, who captured the European Junior Challenge title in Harbin, China in January. The women’s Pacific region representative will be Japan’s Satsuki Fujisawa, who defeated China for the trip to Vancouver.
Other countries represented with two teams are Denmark and Switzerland. The women’s field will also include teams from the Czech Republic and France, while the additional men’s squads will hail from Germany and Norway.
The championship features three daily draws from March 5-12 with tiebreakers and the Page Playoffs scheduled from Thursday night March 12 (if necessary) through Saturday, March 14. Following Saturday’s semifinals, scheduled for 19:00 local time, the bronze medal games and championship finals will take place Sunday, March 15 at 09:00 (women) and 13:00 (men).
Live scoring, statistics and shot-by-shot graphics of every match are available at
http://www.wjcc.curlit.com with results mirrored at the World Curling Federation results website at
http://results.worldcurling.org
The event website is located at http://www.wjcc2009.com