World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship begins on Sunday in Lohja

The World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship 2023 will take place in the Kisakallio Sports Institute in Lohja, Finland from 5–10 November.

11 teams will play for spots in the World Wheelchair Curling Championship 2023 line-up. The three podium-finisher teams in Lohja qualify for the world championship, taking place in March 2024 in Gangneung, Korea.

The Kisakallio Sports Institute has hosted the mixed team World Wheelchair-B Championship six times previously — in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. In 2015, the mixed team world championship was also held there. Additionally, the inaugural World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship also took place there in May 2022.

Participating teams

The participating teams are Brazil, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.

With one change in their line-up, the Estonian team participated in the Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing in March 2022 where they finished tenth.

The Swiss team also took part in the Paralympic Games last year, where they came 11th. Switzerland skip Laurent Kneubuehl led the Swiss team at the Paralympics in Beijing as well, while vice-skip Marcel Bodenmann and lead Beatrix Blauel have Paralympic experience from 2018.

Italy’s lead, Orietta Berto finished fourth in the inaugural World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship in 2022 with her partner, Paolo Ioratti.

England skip Stewart Pimblett took part in last year’s world wheelchair mixed doubles, where he came fifth with Rosemary Lenton.

This will be the first appearance on world wheelchair curling ice for a team representing Brazil and Spain.

Playing format and schedule

Round-robin play starts on Sunday 5 November and continues until Thursday 9 November.

The teams have been placed into one group and will play a round robin. At the end of the round robin, a ranking will be established and the first four teams will move onto the semi-finals.

The semi-finals will take place at 9.30 on Friday 10 November, where the team ranked first will play the team ranked fourth, and the team ranked second will meet the team ranked third.

The winners of the semi-finals advance to the gold medal game; the losers of the semi-finals will play for bronze medals. Both medal games will be held at 16.00 on Friday 10 November.

Click here for the full playing schedule.

All times are EET (Eastern European Time) which is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) +2 hours.

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