Olympians named; Eriksson aims for double podium
One of curling’s strongest high-performance nations is among the first to announce their confirmed athletes for the three Olympic curling competitions at Beijing 2022.
Today’s news won’t surprise curling fans, but it will fuel the continuing debate concerning how nations declare their curling athletes for each quadrennial Olympics.
Some nations host direct qualification “trials” competitions to declare their Olympic representatives. The trials operated by Canada and the United States will take place much close closer to the Games, some six to eight months after Sweden’s athletes were announced.
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Niklas Edin’s squad are now three-time defending champions in men’s four-player curling, with Edin himself now owning five world titles. The squad also won Olympic silver three years ago in PyeongChang, and a different Edin-led foursome scored Olympic bronze in 2014.
Anna Hasselborg’s women’s foursome are the defending Olympic champions and have won two European titles to go along with two world silver medals in four tries. They have also captured five Grand Slam crowns since the fall of 2018.
The recent world bronze in mixed doubles captured by Edin third Oskar Eriksson and partner Almida De Val was good enough for their nomination by the Swedish Olympic Committee; Eriksson also won 2019 world gold when paired with Hasselborg.
Beijing will see Eriksson aim to become the first curling athlete to win two medals at the same Olympic Winter Games.
The two alternates will be Johanna Heldin (four-player women) and Daniel Magnusson (four-player men).
Nine of the curlers were present at the announcement, which also included confirmation of additional Beijing-bound athletes in skiing, snowboarding and ice hockey. A total of 22 individual athletes and 12 teams in multiple sport disciplines have now been named to represent Sweden in Beijing.