The Winter Olympic Games is a major international multi-sport event held once every four years for sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympic Games, the 1924 Winter Olympics, were held in Chamonix, France. The modern Olympic Games were inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece, from 776 BC to 394 AD. The Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) 1,500 years later in 1894, leading to the first modern Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece in 1896. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority. The original five Winter Olympic Sports were bobsleigh, curling, ice hockey, Nordic skiing, and skating. The Games were held every four years from 1924 to 1936, interrupted in 1940 and 1944 by World War II, and resumed in 1948. Until 1992, the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games were held in the same year. This cycle changed in 1986, when during the 91st International Olympic Committee sesion held in 1986, IOC members decided to alternate the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games on separate four-year cycles in even-numbered years. Also, at that same congress it was decided that 1992 Winter Olympics would be the last to be held in the same year as the Summer Games and that to change the rotation, the edition that would be held in 1996 would be brought forward by two years, being scheduled to 1994.After this edition, the next one was to be held in 1998 when the 4-years Olympic Cycle resumed.
The 1992 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVI Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Albertville '92, was a winter multi-sport event held from 8 to 23 February 1992 in and around Albertville, France. Albertville won the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 1986, beating Sofia, Falun, Lillehammer, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Anchorage, and Berchtesgaden. The 1992 Winter Olympics were the last winter games held in the same year as the Summer Olympics. The Games were the fifth Olympic Games held in France and the country's third Winter Olympics, after the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix and the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble. This games was the first of two consecutive Olympic games to be held in Western Europe, preceding the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
Jacqueline "Jackie" Lockhart is a Scottish curler who has competed prolifically in major international competitions for Scotland, and for the Great Britain team that competes at the Olympic Winter Games. She was part of the BBC's Winter Olympics commentary team for the Curling at the Sochi 2014, Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022.
Canada has competed at every Winter Olympic Games, and has won at least one medal each time. By total medals, the country's best performance was in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games where Canadian athletes won 29 medals. Canada set a new record for most gold medals won by a country in a single Winter Olympics with 14 at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. This achievement surpassed the previous record of 13 gold medals held by the Soviet Union (1976) and Norway (2002). Both Germany and Norway matched the record total of 14 gold medals in Pyeongchang in 2018. This record has since been surpassed by Norway with 16 at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Ayumi Ogasawara is a Japanese curler, born November 25, 1978, as Ayumi Onodera. She skipped her own team in Sapporo, Hokkaido, until 2015, which represented Japan at the 2014 Winter Olympics before retiring from competitive sports. Currently she is working as a curling coach.
Albert Mikhailovich Demchenko is a Russian luger who competed from 1992 to 2014. He is currently coaching the Russian luge team. His daughter Victoria Demchenko is also a luger.
Mixed doubles or mixed pairs is a form of mixed-sex sports that consists of teams of one man and one woman. This variation of competition is prominent in curling and racket sports, such as tennis, table tennis, and badminton, as well as gymnastics, figure skating, and card games such as contract bridge.
Jill Officer is a Canadian curler from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Officer played second for the teams skipped by Jennifer Jones from 2003 to 2018 and while they were juniors. The team won a gold medal while representing Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Team Jones was the first women’s team to go through an Olympic campaign undefeated. The team has also won two World Curling Championships in 2008 and 2018, while going through the later event without a loss on their way to gold.
Thomas Ulsrud was a Norwegian curler from Oslo. He won a silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics, one World Curling Championship, two European Curling Championships, and fourteen Norwegian titles. He was also known for being the skip of the team that competed while wearing colourful harlequin trousers at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Team Ulsrud's combined showmanship and sportsmanship became iconic and contributed to reviving worldwide interest in curling since then.
Eve Muirhead is a Scottish former curler from Perth and the skip of the British Olympic Curling team. Muirhead and the GB team became Olympic champions at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, having previously won the bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The United States Curling Association is the national governing body of the sport of curling in the United States. The goal of the USCA is to grow the sport of curling in the United States and win medals in competitions both domestic and abroad. Curling's recent popularity has swelled the USCA to 185 curling clubs and approximately 23,500 curlers in the United States. The United States Olympic men's curling teams have seen success in recent years, most notably winning the gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, led by skip John Shuster.
The United States competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, from February 7 to 23, 2014. Team USA consisted of 222 athletes competing in all 15 sports.
Great Britain, represented by the British Olympic Association (BOA), competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, from 7 to 23 February 2014. The British team was made up of athletes from the whole United Kingdom including Northern Ireland, whose athletes may have elected to hold Irish citizenship, allowing them to represent either Great Britain or Ireland. Additionally some British overseas territories competed separately from Britain in Olympic competition. A total of 56 athletes competed in 11 sports making it the biggest contingent that Great Britain had sent to a Winter Olympic Games for twenty-six years.
Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) was the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) designation of select Russian athletes permitted to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The designation was instigated following the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee after the Russian doping scandal. This was the second time that Russian athletes had participated under the neutral Olympic flag, the first being in the Unified Team of 1992.
The rate of participation of women in the Olympic Games has been increasing since their first participation in 1900. Some sports are uniquely for women, others are contested by both sexes, while some older sports remain for men only. Studies of media coverage of the Olympics consistently show differences in the ways in which women and men are described and the ways in which their performances are discussed. The representation of women on the International Olympic Committee has run well behind the rate of female participation, and it continues to miss its target of a 20% minimum presence of women on their committee.
A total of 10 teams in each tournament will qualify for a quota of 100 athletes in curling at the 2022 Winter Olympics. A further 10 mixed doubles pairs will qualify for a total of 20 athletes. Therefore, a total of 120 athletes can qualify in total to compete in the curling competitions.
This article contains lists of achievements in major senior-level international curling and wheelchair curling tournaments according to first-place, second-place and third-place results obtained by teams representing different nations. The objective is not to create combined medal tables; the focus is on listing the best positions achieved by teams in major international tournaments, ranking the nations according to the most number of podiums accomplished by teams of these nations.
The curling competitions of the 2022 Winter Olympics were held at the Beijing National Aquatics Centre, one of the Olympic Green venues. Curling competitions were scheduled for every day of the games, from February 2 to February 20. This was the eighth time that curling was part of the Olympic program.
