Team Canada looks to lock up Olympic curling spots during an intriguing 2024-25 season
There is certainly no shortage of interesting storylines on the Canadian curling scene during the 2024-25 season.
It is, after all, the season in which Team Canada can secure its Olympic spots in the women’s, men’s, and mixed doubles tournaments for Milano Cortina 2026. It’s also the season in which the names of the two athletes who would be Team Canada in the next Olympic mixed doubles tournament will become known.
Throughout the fall, four-player teams will be getting themselves tuned up for the national championships in February where they will compete for the right to be Team Canada at the world championships in the spring.
Here’s a look at who and what you’ll want to keep an eye on.
Major Competitions in Canada
- Pan Continental Curling Championships – October 27-November 2, 2024 – Lacombe, Alberta
- Canadian Mixed Doubles Curling Trials – December 30, 2024-January 4, 2025 – Liverpool, Nova Scotia
- Tournament of Hearts (Canadian Women’s Championship) – February 14-23, 2025 – Thunder Bay, Ontario
- Brier (Canadian Men’s Championship) – February 28-March 9, 2025 – Kelowna, British Columbia
- World Men’s Curling Championship – March 29-April 6, 2025 – Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
- World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship – April 26-May 3, 2025 – Fredericton, New Brunswick
World Championships
- World Women’s Curling Championship – March 15-23, 2025 – Uijeongbu, South Korea
- World Men’s Curling Championship – March 29-April 6, 2025 – Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
- World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship – April 26-May 3, 2025 – Fredericton, New Brunswick
What to Watch
The first key international tournament of the season is the Pan Continental Curling Championships, which is the qualifying event for the World Men’s and Women’s Curling Championships for teams from the Americas and Pacific-Asia zones. Team Canada will be represented by reigning national champions Team Gushue (men) and Team Homan (women).
It will be a new-look Team Gushue that will compete there, following the announcement on October 15 that Brendan Bottcher would become the team’s second. That reveal came just a few days after they parted ways with EJ Harnden, who had won back-to-back Briers with skip Brad Gushue, third Mark Nichols, and lead Geoff Walker in 2023 and 2024, going on to finish second at the world championships both years.
More than a decade younger than Gushue and Nichols – who won Olympic gold together at Turin 2006 before their bronze medal with Walker and former second Brett Gallant at Beijing 2022 – Bottcher brings excellent shot-making skills as well as a wealth of experience, which includes the 2021 Brier title as skip.
“When we made this decision, it was all about giving ourselves the best chance to be representing Team Canada at the Olympics and hopefully bring back a gold medal,” Gushue told CBC’s Devin Heroux. “And our goal is to go through the next year and a year and a half or a little bit more than that with this lineup. And Brendan is 100 per cent committed to doing whatever he can to be the best.”
In the first Grand Slam of Curling event of the season, Team Gushue were the runners-up, dropping the final to the immensely talented team from Scotland skipped by Bruce Mouat, 2022 Olympic silver medallist and 2023 World champion.
Rachel Homan and her team of third Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew, and lead Sarah Wilkes were also runners-up at the Grand Slam season opener in Charlottetown. The reigning world champions were defeated in the final by four-time Canadian champion Kerri Einarson, who was playing with her regular third Val Sweeting as well as Dawn McEwen at second (filling in for Shannon Birchard, recovering from a knee injury) and Krysten Karwacki at lead.
In a big shakeup of the customary calendar, this winter will include the Canadian Mixed Doubles Trials where 16 teams will battle to become Team Canada at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games. Before that nomination is official, though, they would first compete at the 2025 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship at home in New Brunswick, where the goal is to secure the Olympic spot for Canada. To do that, Canada needs to be among the top-eight countries in the combined placements from the 2024 and 2025 World Championships (top seven if Olympic host nation Italy is not among those eight teams).
Already qualified for the Canadian Mixed Doubles Trials are Kadriana Lott & Colton Lott, Laura Walker & Kirk Muyres, Jocelyn Peterman & Brett Gallant, Nancy Martin & Steve Laycock, and Jennifer Jones & Brent Laing. The married Lotts finished fifth while representing Canada at the 2024 World Championship.
Three more entries will be determined via direct qualifying events this fall: October 31-November 3 in Abbotsford, B.C.; November 21-24 in Guelph, Ont.; December 5-8 in Banff/Canmore, Alb. The field will be filled out by the top eight non-qualified teams in the Canadian Mixed Doubles Rankings on December 9.
When the calendar flips to 2025, the focus for the four-person teams will be squarely on the respective national championships: the Scotties Tournament of Hearts for women and the Montana’s Brier for men.
In addition to Team Gushue and Team Homan, who are automatically in as the reigning national champions, there are three pre-qualified teams for each tournament based on the 2023-24 Canadian Team Ranking System (CTRS).
For the women, those are Team Chelsea Carey (third Karlee Burgess, second Emily Zacharias, lead Lauren Lenentine), Team Kerri Einarson, and Team Kaitlyn Lawes (third Selena Njegovan, second Jocelyn Peterman, lead Kristin MacCuish). Carey took over skipping duties of the Winnipeg-based team that had been led by Jennifer Jones before she retired from four-person play at the end of last season. They were the runners-up at the 2023 and 2024 Tournament of Hearts.
The other men’s teams confirmed for the Brier are Team Brad Jacobs (third Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert), Team Mike McEwen (third Colton Flasch, second Kevin Marsh, lead Dan Marsh), and Team Matt Dunstone (third B.J. Neufeld, second Colton Lott, lead Ryan Harnden). Jacobs became the skip this season of the Alberta-based team that Bottcher had skipped to third place at the last two Briers. McEwen was skip of the runners-up at the 2024 Brier while Dunstone’s team finished second the year before.
The remaining 14 spots in the men’s and women’s national championship fields will be filled by the Member Association (provincial/territorial) champions.
The trophy-winning teams at the Brier and Tournament of Hearts will go on to be Team Canada at their respective world championships. Just as with the mixed doubles, Canada needs to be among the top eight countries in the combined placements from the 2024 and 2025 World Championships to lock up its spots in the men’s and women’s Olympic tournaments for Milano Cortina 2026 (top seven if Italy is not among the top eight).
Though the Canadian Curling Trials to determine who will be Team Canada in men’s and women’s curling at Milano Cortina 2026 won’t take place until November 2025, at the end of this season we will know five more teams of each gender who will get to compete at those Trials, based on the CTRS. Team Homan and Team Carey are already qualified for the women’s Trials, while Team Gushue and Team Jacobs are into the men’s Trials. The eighth and final spot at each of the men’s and women’s Trials will go to the winner of a Pre-Trials event in October 2025.