World Wheelchair Curling Championships to get underway

The 2016 World Wheelchair Curling Championships will get underway in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Sunday (21 February)

Live scores, news and pictures during the event and the schedule will be available at the event website.

The Championship, which sees the world’s ten best wheelchair curling nations compete for not only the world title, but Paralympic Winter Games qualification points, runs Sunday 28 February 2016.

This is the second year that teams can gain points for the next Paralympic Winters Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018. The team who wins gold will receive 12 points, the team who takes silver will get ten points and the team who collects bronze will receive eight points. Depending on the standings the remaining teams will earn one to seven points.

Having won Gold in Lohja, Finland, in 2015, Russia currently lead the Paralympic points table, with China in second place and Finland in third. Between the three World Championships leading up to the next Paralympics 12 teams will be determined to compete at Pyeongchang 2018.

The teams competing in Lucerne are: Canada, China, Finland, Germany, South Korea, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, hosts Switzerland and USA.

Canada will be represented by the Sochi 2014 Paralympic champions, skipped by Jim Armstrong. 2015 World Wheelchair champions Russia and silver medallists in Sochi will once again be skipped by Andrey Smirnov.

China, who took silver at the World Championships in Finland last year, will be represented by a new team competing at this level. Markku Karjalainen will skip Finland once again, after their historic bronze medal win in 2015.

Norway and South Korea secured their places at this year’s Championship after finishing first and second respectively at the Wheelchair -B Curling Championship in Finland last November.

This event will begin with a round-robin, before progressing to a potential tie-breaker round, if required and then page play-offs, semi-finals and finals.

The round-robin will start on Sunday 21 February at 16.30 (CET) and run until the last session, which begins at 09.00 on Friday 26 February.

The page play-offs will be played at 19.00 on Saturday 27 February. The page play-offs will see the top ranked team play the second ranked team and the third and fourth ranked teams play each other after the round-robin. The winner of the 1v2 game progresses immediately to the gold medal game, while the winner of the 3v4 game plays the loser of the 1v2 game in a semi-final. The loser of the 3v4 game enters the bronze medal final.

The semi-finals and gold and bronze medal games will be played on Sunday 28 February. The semi-finals will begin at 10.00, while the finals will start at 15.00.

This will be the fourth time this World Curling Championship will have been held in Switzerland. The nearby town of Sursee hosted the championship in 2002, 2004 and 2008.