WORlD MIxED DOUblEs 2012 World Mixed Doubles Championship April 23-29, 2012 • Erzurum, Turkey
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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 Year 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008
Gold sUI SUI RUS SUI SUI
World Mixed Doubles Results: Team silver nadine lehmann-Martin Rios sWE Sven Michel-Alina Patz RUS Petr Dron-Jana Nekrasova NZL Toni Mueller-Irene Schori HUN Toni Mueller-Irene Schori FIN
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bronze AUs FRA CHN CAN SWE
UsA 4 7 10 18 15