With its purpose-built venue – the 3,000 seat Ice Cube Curling Centre – situated at the heart of the Coastal Cluster, curling will be at the centre of the action at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, which open on Friday February 7th.
The curling competition gets underway on the morning of Monday 10th February, with ten of the world’s top men’s and ten of the world’s top women’s teams vying for medals.
The men’s teams are: Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States of America.
The women’s line-up is: Canada, China, Denmark, Great Britain, Japan, Korea, the Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States of America.
To make it to Sochi, these nations and teams have followed different qualification routes. The Russians are there as event hosts, with another seven teams qualifying through their performances at the last two World Curling Federation (WCF) world championships (in 2012 and 2013).
In the men’s field the direct qualifiers were Canada, China, Denmark, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. (The world qualification points gained by WCF Member Association Scotland are allocated to Great Britain for Olympic purposes). The seven direct women’s qualifiers were Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and USA.
The fields were then completed by the top two teams from a special WCF Olympic Qualification event, staged – for the first time – in Fuessen, Germany, in December 2013.
In the men’s event, Germany topped the rankings and USA joined them in second place. China won the women’s event, with Japan finishing second to take the last available women’s position.
With every team made up of four players and an alternate, there are 100 curling athletes taking part in the Sochi Games.
Visit www.sochi2014.curlingevents.com The official World Curling Federation website for the Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games – see the site for the complete schedule of play, full team line ups, news, photos, results and more:
• The Official Sochi 2014 event website: www.sochi2014.com/en/curling
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/worldcurlingfederation
• Twitter Hashtags: #curling #sochi2014