USCA Media Guide - Great Lakes Curling Association

WORlD MIxED DOUblEs
2012 World Mixed Doubles Championship
April 23-29, 2012 • Erzurum, Turkey
D
espite leaving Turkey without a medal, USA’s team of Brady Clark
and Cristin Clark of Lynnwood, Wash., recorded the USA’s bestever
finish with a fourth-place showing at the 2012 World Mixed
Doubles Championship in Erzurum, Turkey.
The Americans fell to Austria’s Christian Roth and Claudia
Roth, 12-7, in the bronze medal game April 29 at the Milli Piyango Curling Hall.
This was Austria’s first world curling medal.
“We hope to continue to improve and learn some lessons from this year,
and hopefully win the U.S. another time and come back to improve our rankings,”
Brady Clark said after the game. “We had opportunities. We wish we
could have medalled. It is what it is. It was a great championship, and congratulations
to the Swiss.”
Switzerland clipped Sweden, 7-6, as Swedish last-rock thrower Per Noreen
tried to score three points to win the gold medal but one of the Swiss stones
he was trying to remove jammed and remained in second count, and the
Swedes came up short. Switzerland has now won four of five gold medals since
the event debuted in 2008.
This was the third appearance for the Clarks, who also have won nine U.S.
mixed national titles, and their best finish after reaching the playoffs for the
first time for the U.S. in 2011 in St. Paul.
“Well, it’s better than last year. I guess we were seventh last year, and now
we’re fourth,” Cristin Clark said after the game.
After Austria opened with a deuce, the Americans answered with four
points in the second end to take their first lead. Austria quickly answered with
another deuce to tie the game at 4-4. The U.S. was limited to a single in the
fourth when Brady Clark was forced to throw away his final stone as there was
not a shot to score more than one point. With the momentum now in their corner,
the Austrians capitalized, tapping forward a stone of their own stone to
score four points in the fifth end. The Austrian duo scored four more again as
they capitalized on missed shots by the U.S. in the seventh end, which prompted
the Americans to concede the match.
“It’s a really great feeling to win a medal,” Claudia Toth said. “Austria’s
never won a medal, neither at Europeans or Worlds. We thought we could
make it but we just tried our best and we’re still getting our head around that
it actually happened.”
The 2013 World Mixed Doubles Championship will take place April 13-20 in
the new Grant-Harvey Centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. This will
be the first time Canada will host the World Mixed Doubles.
Overall results
World Mixed Doubles Results:
Year Gold Team silver bronze UsA
2012 sUI nadine lehmann-Martin Rios sWE AUs 4
2011 SUI Sven Michel-Alina Patz RUS FRA 7
2010 RUS Petr Dron-Jana Nekrasova NZL CHN 10
2009 SUI Toni Mueller-Irene Schori HUN CAN 18
2008 SUI Toni Mueller-Irene Schori FIN SWE 15
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