Peterman & Gallant win mixed doubles curling trials to take next step on Olympic journey
Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant are on the verge of being Team Canada’s mixed doubles curling team at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
On Saturday, they defeated Rachel Homan and Brendan Bottcher 8-7 in the final of the Canadian Mixed Doubles Curling Trials in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. That means Peterman and Gallant will head to the 2025 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship taking place April 26-May 3 in Fredericton, New Brunswick with the goal of locking up qualification for Canada and themselves in the Olympic mixed doubles tournament.
Combined placements from the 2024 and 2025 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championships will determine the first seven teams who will join host Italy in the Olympic tournament. Canada will carry in a fifth-place finish from last year’s worlds. The last two countries in the 10-team Olympic tournament will be decided at a qualification event in December.
Undefeated throughout the trials, Peterman and Gallant opened the final with the hammer and scored themselves three points in the first end. After a Homan miss on her last throw, Peterman delivered a perfect hit with her last rock to capitalize.
In the second end, Homan and Bottcher had a good chance to get two on the scoreboard, but Homan’s last shot wrecked on a guard, giving Peterman and Gallant a steal of one to go up 4-0.
Homan and Bottcher continued to have hammer in the third end, but were facing two stones of Peterman and Gallant, who had made a nice hit with their last throw. Making the draw under pressure, Homan and Bottcher managed to get one to make it a 4-1 game.
In the fourth end, Peterman and Gallant were lying two with the hammer after Homan and Bottcher’s last rock rubbed a guard and didn’t get to where they wanted. Peterman and Gallant made a tap at an attempt for three but the rock rolled just a bit too far, giving them a 6-1 lead at the mid-match break.
To try to get back into it in the fifth end, Homan and Bottcher used their power play, a once-per-game opportunity for a team to adjust the location of the pre-placed stones for greater scoring potential. After a big miss by Gallant partway through the end, it looked like the power play might pay off in a big way, with Homan and Bottcher lying four at one point. However, the house would gradually get cleared, leaving Homan and Bottcher just a draw for two to make it a 6-3 score.
With hammer again in the sixth end, Peterman and Gallant were looking to score three after they had used their power play. While they made the tap they wanted, one of their stones again rolled just a bit too far and they had to settle for two points and the 8-3 lead.
Needing a big score in the seventh, Homan and Bottcher had a good chance at three, or perhaps even four. However, their last throw jammed on the nose of a rock in the house and they could only come away with two, giving Peterman and Gallant a three-point lead as they headed into the eighth and final end with hammer.
With his last powerful throw, Gallant almost completely cleared the house, giving Homan and Bottcher no where to hide their last stone. Facing three open yellow stones, Peterman made the simple direct hit to knock one out and secure an 8-7 victory.
Peterman and Gallant had posted a perfect 7-0 record in their pool during the round robin portion of the competition. In the first round of the playoffs, they defeated Homan and Bottcher to advance to the 1v2 page playoff game. A win over Lisa Weagle and John Epping sent them directly into the final with their undefeated record in tact.
Following the loss in their first playoff game, Homan and Bottcher had to take the long route to the final. A win over father-daughter duo Jim and Jaelyn Cotter put them into the 3v4 page playoff game, where a win against Brittany Tran and Rylan Kleiter, who had an identical 6-1 round robin record, sent them into Saturday morning’s semifinal. An 8-6 win over Weagle and Epping earned them one more game in the final.
Peterman and Gallant are both looking to compete in their second straight Olympic Winter Games. At Beijing 2022, Gallant was the second on Team Brad Gushue that won the bronze medal in the men’s tournament while Peterman was the second for Team Jennifer Jones in the women’s tournament.
Peterman and Gallant are no strangers to representing Canada in mixed doubles, either. They won silver at the 2019 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship and finished fifth at the 2022 World Championship before getting married that summer.
The Canadian Curling Trials to determine Team Canada’s four-player curling teams for Milano Cortina 2026 will be held in November 2025.