World Junior Curling Championships in Pinerolo, Italy – Olympic test event

There are 20 national junior teams gathering in Pinerolo, Italy this week for the 2005 World Junior Curling Championships. The championships for junior men and women will start on Thursday, March 3rd and finish with the finals on next week-end, March 12-13. This is the first time ever that the WJCC will take place in Italy but as in 1997 and 2001, the World Junior Championships will work as the Olympic test event. In Pinerolo, the Olympic curling tournament will take place in February 2006. Pinerolo is situated about 35 kilometres south-west of Torino, the Olympic host city. There are 12 different nations involved among these 20 teams. Following nations have both junior men and junior women teams: Canada, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and USA. Germany and Korea has only junior men. Russia and newcomer China only junior women. Last year the two World Champion teams were coming from Scandinavia, Norway´s junior women and Sweden´s junior men. Remaining from these teams are only two players that will act as alternates this year. Marianne Rørvik who will play her 9th straight WJCC, starting in Karuizawa, Japan back in 1997. The Swedish skip last year, Niklas Edin, will play alternate with Nils Carlsén who played third for Edin last year. Nils will play his 5th straight WJCC, starting in Ogden, USA 2001. Other teams with experience of former WJCC are the two Danish teams, the Italian teams, the men´s team of Korea and Norway, the Russian junior women and the Swedish junior women. As usual the 10 teams of each gender will start playing a round-robin. The four best teams of each group will qualify for the semi finals, final and game for bronze medals. The semi finals will be played for junior women on Friday March 11 with final and bronze game on Saturday. The junior men will play their semi finals on Saturday and final and bronze game on Sunday, March 13. Useful information: WCF webmaster Paul Ahlgren will be in Pinerolo during the whole WJCC reporting from each draw on the WCF website http://www.worldcurlingfederation.org/Curlhome/Results/2004-2005/WJCC/ The address to the WJCC website is http://www.wjcc2005.com/ E-mail to the Organizing Committee: gocurling@torino2006.it Telephone: +39 011 11 25 142, fax: +39 011 1149 150.