>> 2012 Events > World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2012

The World Curling Federation and the Turkish Ice Skating Federation (Turkish Curling Association) have announced that the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship 2012 will be staged in Erzurum, Turkey.

The event will take place from 23-29 April at the 1000 seat Milli Piyango Curling Hall which was the purpose-built venue for the curling competition at the Winter Universiade in January 2011.

“The World Curling Federation is delighted to announce that the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship will be held in Erzurum in 2012. Since the Turkish Curling Association joined WCF in 2009, Turkey has shown considerable commitment to the establishing the sport of curling in the country. Following on from the resounding success of the curling competition at the 2011 Winter Universiade, we expect the 2012 Mixed Doubles Championship to be another first class event,” said World Curling Federation President Kate Caithness.

Fahrettin Kandemir President of the Turkish Ice Skating Federation (Turkish Curling Association) said: “We are very proud to be the host country of 2012 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship. Curling has only been played in Turkey for two years and the Universiade 2011 was the very first international curling competition held in Erzurum. We have achieved very good results during these first two years for the development of curling known as ‘ice chess’ in Turkey. We strongly believe that organising these events serve to develop the sport further. We look forward to welcoming the curling family to Erzurum in April 2012.”

The 2012 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship will be fifth event of its kind. Inaugurated in Vierumaki, Finland in 2008, the second world championship was held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy in 2009. In 2010 the event was staged in Chelyabinsk, Russia and in 2011 it took place in St Paul, Minnesota in the United States.

Instead of playing in teams of four, mixed doubles curling is for teams of two players – one male and one female (no alternate/spare player is allowed).
- The game is played on the same sheets of ice as “traditional” curling.
- Teams have only six stones each (instead of eight) and one of those stones, from each team, is prepositioned on the centreline before each end of play starts.
- Player one delivers the first and last stones and player two plays the second, third and fourth stones. If they choose to, the two players may swap positions from one end to the next.
- Sweeping can be done by both team members.
- Each team receives 46 minutes of playing time and games are fixed at 8 ends – compared to 73 minutes and 10 ends for “traditional‟ curling.

In total 24 nations participated at the 2011 World Championship in St Paul (Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and hosts USA).

In St Paul, Switzerland secured a third gold medal in the discipline (2008, 2009 & 2011) when Sven Michel and Alina Pätz beat Russia’s Alexey Tselousov and Alina Kovaleva in the final 11-2. France (Amaury Pernette and Pauline Jeanneret) beat Sweden (Anders and Sabina Kraupp) 9-7 to win the bronze medal.

For more information visit:

http://www.worldcurling.org/world-mixed-doubles-curling-championship-2012

About Erzurum
Erzurum is the largest city of Turkey’s Eastern Anatolia region and is located 1300 kilometres east of Istanbul. The city has a 6,000 year old history has been inhabited by Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk Turk and Ottoman civilisations. Today the city boasts one of the largest student populations in Turkey, with 40,000 studying at Atatürk University. In January 2011 the 25th Winter Universiade took place in Erzurum and the nearby ski resorts of Palandöken, Konakli and Kandilli.

About the Turkish Curling Association
According to the Laws, Constitution & Rules of the Turkish General Directorate of Youth & Sport, curling falls under the umbrella of the Turkish Ice Skating Federation. In 2009 the Federation joined the WCF with the approval of the Turkish National Olympic Committee. Since then, an active promotional and development programme for curling has been implemented especially in universities, with seminars and courses organized by the Federation. The successful performance of Turkish National Woman’s Team in their first international event carried them to the B group of the European Curling Championship in 2010. There are approximately 210 licensed curlers in Turkey at present. The goal of the Turkish Curling Association is to increase the number of curling facilities in Turkey.