Curling Canada has set its path to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing with one of the qualifiers happening in Saskatchewan.
Canada’s four-player men’s and women’s teams for Beijing will be determined at the 2021 Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings, which will be held Nov. 27 to Dec. 5 at the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon. The mixed doubles team will be decided at the 2022 Canadian Mixed Doubles Trials, Jan. 3 to 9.
The Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings format will be unchanged from the 2017 event in Ottawa — a nine-team round-robin draw for both men and women, with the top three teams reaching the playoffs. The first-place team in the round robin will go straight to the championship final while the second- and third-place teams will play in the semi-final.
In order to make it to the trials, teams can qualify in a number of ways. This includes:
2019 Home Hardware Canada Cup champion (2019-20 Canadian Team Ranking System [CTRS] total);
2020 Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Moose Jaw/Tim Hortons Brier champion (2019-20 CTRS total);
2020 Home Hardware Canada Cup champion (2020-21 CTRS total);
2021 Scotties Tournament of Hearts/Tim Hortons Brier champion (2020-21 CTRS total);
Two-year CTRS total, 2019-20, 2020-21 seasons (highest non-qualified team);
Two-year CTRS total, 2019-20, 2020-21 seasons (highest non-qualified team);
2020-21 CTRS single-season total (highest non-qualified team);
Road to the Roar Pre-Trials qualifier;
Road to the Roar Pre-Trials qualifier.
Canadian champions won’t be required to win a medal at the world championship in order to secure their Trials berth.
The other seven entries for the Road to the Roar Pre-Trials will also come from the 2020-21 CTRS standings.
Canada will enter the 2022 Winter Olympics as reigning mixed doubles gold-medallists after the tandem of Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris prevailed in 2018 at Pyeongchang, South Korea, where mixed doubles curling made its debut as an Olympic medal discipline.
Canada will still have to qualify for the Beijing Olympics in all three disciplines. China as the host country has already qualified, while the 10-team fields in each discipline will be mostly determined by the combined results of the 2020 and 2021 world men’s, women’s and mixed doubles championships, with seven countries qualifying in each discipline.
The final two qualifying countries will come out of last-chance Olympic qualifying events, scheduled for December 2021.
