Curling at the 2018 Winter Olympics

For the first time since the re-introduction of curling, as a demonstration sport in 1988, and ten years later as a full medal sport, a new event was added to the traditional two team events for women and men. The new event, a mixed doubles competition, reflected the mission of the IOC to introduce not only the same number of events for both genders, but also to establish more mixed events. In 2008, the World Curling Federation held the first World Championship in this event.

All 2018 curling contests were held in the Gangneung Curling Centre in Gangneung’s Olympic Park. The venue, with a capacity of 3,500 seats, was opened in 1998 under the name of Gangneung Gymnasium, and was the venue for ice hockey at the 1999 Asian Winter Games. Since then, a number of top curling events had been staged at the venue, including the 2009 World Women’s Curling Championship, and the 2017 World Junior Curling Championships.

For the women and men’s team events, 10 countries could qualify: the host country South Korea, seven teams according to a ranking list based on the results of the 2016 and 2017 World Championships and the two finalists from qualification tournaments held in Plzeň in the Czech Republic in December 2017. Canada headed both ranking lists. The countries that qualified additionally in the tournament were China and Denmark in the women’s event and Italy and Denmark in the men’s event. For the mixed doubles event, the number of qualified doubles was restricted to eight: host South Korea and seven teams from the World’s ranking lists (as above), with China heading the list and Canada placed second.

While the 2014 Olympic tournament was dominated by Canada, winning both gold medals, in PyeongChang they failed to win a medal of any color in the two main team events, for the first time since curling returned as a full Olympic sport in 1998. They did, however, win the gold in the mixed doubles.

The most successful country in 2018 was Sweden, winning gold in the women’s and silver in the men’s team events. This maintained the dominance of the Swedish ladies during the last four Olympics with three gold and one silver. Their men’s team climbed up the podium from fourth place in 2010 to bronze in 2014 and now silver. The victory of the US men’s team came as a surprise, having medaled only once before, a bronze in 2006. Great Britain could not repeat their medal count of 2014 this time ,making Switzerland the second best European team, with bronze in the men’s team, and silver in the mixed doubles. What was considered a fairy tale was the silver medal of the local Korean women’s team, who advanced to the final in a convincing manner. and were only defeated by the Swedes. Before the Winter Olympics, the host country had never even won a medal at the World Championships.

The disqualification of the initially third-placed mixed doubles team, “Olympic Athletes from Russia”, the first doping case in these Olympics, overshadowed the curling tournament. When Aleksandr Krushelnitsky failed the drug test, the medal was awarded to Norway.