Road to Mixed Doubles Curling Championship

As 2024 comes to a close, we move closer to the 2026 Winter Games in Italy! That means we’ll begin seeing athletes compete in critical competitions for a chance to represent their country in Milano Cortina.

Next week, Canadian curlers are headed to the Mixed Doubles Curling Trials from December 30 to January 4 in Liverpool, N.S. The tournament winners will represent the Maple Leaf on home soil –er ice for the 2025 Mixed Doubles Curling Championship in Fredericton, the hometown of ice hockey legend Willie O’Ree.

During the spring event, 10 Olympic teams will qualify for the 2026 Winter Games. Here’s who has already qualified for the Mixed Doubles Championship this month:

• 🇦🇺Australia

• 🇨🇦Canada

• 🇨🇳China

• 🇨🇿Czechia

• 🇩🇰Denmark

• 🇪🇪Estonia

• 🇫🇮Finland

• 🇩🇪Germany

• 🇮🇹Italy

• 🇯🇵Japan

• 🇰🇷Korea

• 🇳🇱Netherlands

• 🇳🇿New Zealand

• 🇳🇴Norway

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland

• 🇪🇸Spain

• 🇸🇪Sweden

• 🇨🇭Switzerland

• 🇹🇷Türkiye (Turkey)

• 🇺🇸 United States

Does Lindsey Vonn’s comeback include the 2026 Olympics?

We discussed Vonn’s toe-dip out of retirement in the previous Gold Medal Dispatch issue. Now we have more news: Vonn is officially competing again!

The 40-year-old competed in the Super G race in Switzerland over the weekend, where she placed 14th.

“It’s been 2,162 days since my last World Cup race (almost 6 years!) but yesterday I got back in the starting gate and competed once again,” Vonn posted on social media.

“Thank you to everyone who made this weekend so incredible! My team, my family, the organizers, volunteers and all of the amazing fans… THANK YOU!!”

Cornelia Hütter (Austria), Lara Gut-Behrami (Switzerland), and Sofia Goggia (Italy) placed Top 3, while U.S. skier Lauren Macuga placed seventh.

🇰🇪🏒KENYA EARNS IIHF ACCREDITATION

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, I spent the 2022 Beijing Olympics tracking down stories of Black athletes competing in Beijing.

Did you know that at the 2022 Olympics, less than 3% of the athletes were Black identifying? Nevertheless, Black women, in particular, thrived at the 2022 Games.

That’s why amateur tournaments like the Dream Nations Cup and the Amerigol LATAM Cup where I’ve been a play-by-play broadcaster, are critically important. Nations considered “non-traditional” hockey markets often use these friendlies for recruitment and training.

Some teams play for the comradery, but others have Olympic aspirations. To compete in Olympic qualifiers, federations must first be recognized by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). Earlier this month, the Kenya Ice Lions received their membership.

Kenya is the fifth African nation in the IIHF. South Africa was the first to join in 1937, but the other three nations joined between 2010-2021.

“We've been dreaming of this, we’ve been wanting this,” captain Benjamin Mburu told Bill Douglas for The Color of Hockey column on NHL.com. “Having them admit us was a very big milestone for us because it means more growth, more energy moving forward, more focus and bigger dreams as we proceed.”