Wheelchair curling teams aim for qualification

02.11.2012

The top two finishers from this weekend’s World Wheelchair Curling Qualification tournament will advance to next year’s World Championships in Sochi, Russia.
 

Switzerland will try to qualify for the next Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi during the World Wheelchair Curling Championships 2013. © • Getty Images

At stake are the two final places in the field at February’s World Wheelchair Curling Championships 2013 which will be staged in the Ice Cube Curling Centre in Sochi, Russia and will also serve as the Paralympic test event for the sport.

Eleven teams will try to make a run at qualifying for the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games when the World Wheelchair Curling Qualification tournament gets underway on Saturday (3 November) at the Kisakallio Sports Institute in Lohja, Finland.

Turkey will make their international wheelchair curling debut at this event, joining 10 other teams including: the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Norway, Poland and Switzerland.

At stake are the two final places in the field at February’s World Wheelchair Curling Championships 2013 which will be staged in the Ice Cube Curling Centre in Sochi, Russia and will also serve as the Paralympic test event for the sport.

Within the eleven teams taking part, there are several athletes with Paralympic Winter Games experience, including Denmark’s Kenneth Orbaek, who competed at the Torino 2006 Games and Jens Jaeger, who competed at Vancouver 2010.

They will be joined by Norwegian two-time Paralympian and former world champion Rune Lorentsen. He returns to skip Norway in the qualification event following their relegation from the top tier of teams.

Italy also returns to the qualification event following their performance at the World Wheelchair Curling Championships in Korea earlier this year.

The event begins with a round-robin format, and then the top four teams after that stage will advance to the playoff round on Thursday (8 November), with the top two finishers advancing to the World Championships from 16-23 February.

A complete schedule of play and list of lineups is available here.

A live online broadcast of the qualification event will be available here.

Russia, Korea, China, Slovakia, USA, Scotland, Canada and Sweden have already qualified for the World Championships based on their final rankings at the 2012 event.

The 2013 World Championships will be the last opportunity for nations to gather qualification points for Sochi 2014.