Kate Caithness CBE is a Scottish curler. She served as the President of the World Curling Federation [1] from 2010 to 2022.
Kate Caithness CBE is a Scottish curler. She served as the President of the World Curling Federation [1] from 2010 to 2022.
Caithness began curling in the 1980s, playing for the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. From 1997 to 1998, she served as the president of the club's ladies branch, later representing the Club at the World Curling Federation. At the World Curling Federation, Caithness promoted wheelchair curling, helping make it a Paralympic sport in 2006 in Turin.
Caithness served on the International Paralympic Committee's Sports Council Management Committee from 2005 to 2009, and on the Paralympic Games Committee from 2006 to 2009.
In 2006, Caithness was elected vice-president, and in 2010 President, of the World Curling Federation. [2] She is the first female president of the World Curling Federation, as well as the first female president of any Olympic Winter Sports Federation. [1]
On 29 December 2012 Kate Caithness was bestowed the honour of an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to curling and international disability sport. It was presented to her by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at a ceremony in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Speaking about the award, Caithness said: “I am absolutely thrilled and delighted. It is a great honour and is wonderful recognition for the sport of curling and wheelchair curling and all those involved in playing and developing the sport.”
She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to Sport.
In an interview in the Edmonton Sun, Caithness speaks about the growth of Curling
“Curling has become the world’s fastest growing sport and I’m not sure most Canadians realize that fact. We’re widely acknowledged as this being the case. There’s no doubt that that the Olympic Winter Games has put curling in the spotlight. And Vancouver was the launching pad. Vancouver is where we became a sexy sport. Vancouver was huge. It just captured everybody’s imagination.”
“The Olympics and television keep giving us our window to the world,” said Caithness. “And Vancouver opened it like it had never been opened before.
“Television brings the focus to our sport and it has since Nagano ’98 when all those ski events kept getting postponed by weather and they went to curling instead.
“In Vancouver we had 1,125 hours of curling broadcast in 35 territories and that includes Europe, where we have 38 member associations as one. And we’re going to have even more hours and more countries from Sochi 2014.
“In Vancouver curling became the third most watched sport globally of the Olympics.
“In Brazil it was the most watched sport. Imagine that. In Brazil. No. 1. We have no idea how that happened, but they fell in love with it.
“An average minute of curling from Vancouver was watched by 22 million people. Average minute! Twenty-two million! In Japan it was six million alone.
“From Olympics to Olympics from Vancouver proceeding to Sochi, it’s been crazy.
“There are now 24 new curling countries since Vancouver.
“Mongolia!” she said of one of them.
“We’re now going into South America and the Middle East. “And the United States has really taken off. They’re our sleeping giant.”
“And China ... I think what China loves is that it’s chess on ice.”
“It’s like in 2009 we took the women’s world championships to Gangneung, Korea where the 2018 Winter Olympics will be held. It was Sweden vs China in the final and it drew a live audience of 65 million worldwide.
“Any time you can get 65 million people around the world watching anything live that’s an incredible number of viewers.”
The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of disabilities. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, have been held shortly after the corresponding Olympic Games. All Paralympic Games are governed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
The 2014 Winter Paralympics, the 11th Paralympic Winter Games, and also more generally known as the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, were an international multi-sport event for athletes with disabilities governed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), held in Sochi, Russia, from 7 to 16 March 2014. 45 National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) participated in the Games, which marked the first time Russia ever hosted the Paralympics. The Games featured 72 medal events in five sports, and saw the debut of snowboarding at the Winter Paralympics.
Curling was included in the program of the inaugural Winter Olympic Games in 1924 in Chamonix although the results of that competition were not considered official by the International Olympic Committee until 2006. Curling was a demonstration sport at the 1932 Games, and then again after a lengthy absence in 1988 and 1992. The sport was finally added to the official program for the 1998 Games in Nagano.
Wheelchair curling is an adaptation of curling for athletes with a disability affecting their lower limbs or gait. Wheelchair curling is governed by the World Curling Federation, and is one of the sports in the Winter Paralympic Games.
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. In 2024, he was posthumousely inducted into the World Curling Hall of Fame.
The wheelchair curling competition of the 2010 Winter Paralympics was held at the Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, from 13 March to 20 March 2010. Ten teams competed in a single event, a mixed tournament in which men and women competed together.
"Boy Meets Curl" is the twelfth episode of the twenty-first season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 14, 2010. In this episode, Homer and Marge Simpson form a mixed curling team with Agnes and Seymour Skinner, which is chosen to play in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Meanwhile, Lisa begins collecting pins shaped like Olympic mascots, but her obsession soon turns to desperation.
Norway sent a delegation to compete at the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A total of 27 Norwegian athletes competed in four disciplines; the only sport Norway did not compete in is alpine skiing.
Sweden sent 24 competitors to compete in all five disciplines at the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland competed at the 2010 Winter Paralympics held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The team was known by it shortened name of Great Britain, for identification purposes.
Robert Daniel Steadward, is a Canadian retired sports administrator, professor, sports scientist, and author. Steadward helped organize the first Canadian wheelchair sport national championships in 1968, and later coached Canada in wheelchair basketball at the Summer Paralympics. He became a professor at the University of Alberta in 1971, later served as chairman of the Department of Athletics, and published more than 150 papers about disability sport. He was the founding president of the Alberta Wheelchair Sports Association in 1971, founded the Research and Training Centre for Athletes with Disabilities in 1978, served as president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee from 1984 to 1990, and later became a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
James P. Armstrong is a former Canadian curler and wheelchair curler now living in Ontario. He was a successful able-bodied curler for much of his career until he had to stop playing because of bad knees and a car accident in 2003.
Aileen Neilson is a Scottish wheelchair curler. She is the first woman to skip a wheelchair curling team in either the Paralympic Games (2010) or World Championships (2011).
Para-snowboarding classification is the classification system for para-snowboarding. The sport originally called Adaptive Snowboard is now practiced by hundreds of athletes around the world. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) defines three classes: SB-LL for athletes with a physical impairment affecting one or both legs, and SB-UL for athletes with a physical impairment affecting one or both arms who compete standing. The sport made its official Winter Paralympic debut in the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, Russia.
Wheelchair curling classification is the disability classification system for wheelchair curling, which is governed by the World Curling Federation. Only curlers with lower limb mobility problems are allowed to compete.
Angie Malone is a British Paralympian and World Champion Wheelchair curler.
The wheelchair curling competition of the 2014 Winter Paralympics was held from 8 to 15 March 2014 at the Ice Cube Curling Center in Sochi, Russia. Ten mixed teams competed.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland competed at the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, Russia, held between 7–16 of March 2014. The team was known by it shortened name of Great Britain, for identification purposes.
Jacqueline "Jacqui" Kapinowski is a two-time American Paralympian who competed in wheelchair curling at the 2010 Winter Paralympics and in rowing at the 2016 Summer Paralympics.
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.
