World Curling Chief Re-elected; No Action Against Russian Curlers

(ATR) Kate Caithness starts her third, four-year term as head of the international curling federation.

The 60 member associations voted unanimously to return her to office. She was unopposed in the election at the annual congress in Budapest, Hungary.

Also Sunday, Nigeria was voted in as the first African member association, with provisional membership of World Curling. The country becomes part of the Pacific-Asia zone, with the name for this zone set to be changed in future.

In another key decision, the IF’s member federations voted to change the format of the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship after an emergency motion was made.

Mixed doubles made its Olympic debut at the PyeongChang Winter Games.

This event will change from an open entry format to a 20-team world championship and a separate open entry World Challenge, from the 2019-2020 season. For the 2020 worlds, 16 teams will qualify from the previous year’s competition and the remaining four teams will qualify from the World Challenge.

The format change aims to improve the elite status of the discipline.

Caithness said: "This has been a particularly special congress and annual general assembly for me, as I begin my third term in office.

"Dedicated curling facilities have always been and will continue to be my priority, however knowing how quickly the last eight years have passed, I must look to the future regarding succession planning to ensure when it is time for me to hand over the baton, the knowledge and experience I have gained during my terms in office will be passed on to my successor," she said.

At the meeting, a statement was made that no further action will be taken on curlers implicated in the McLaren Reports, published in July and December 2016.

The McLaren Report revealed that more than 1,000 Russian athletes were implicated in the state-sponsored doping program from 2011 to 2015. Russian curler Ekaterina Galkina, who competed in the curling team at the Sochi 2014 Olympics, was investigated for alleged doping violations.

World Curling said that following two years’ of research "insufficient evidence has been found at this time to declare any anti-doping rule violations in cases implicating athletes in the sport of curling".

The information in the McLaren Reports relating to curlers and the data in the Moscow Laboratory Information Management System were reviewed by an independent legal expert selected from the federation’s anti-doping panel.

Caithness said: "Ensuring a clean playing field in the sport of curling is a top priority for our federation and I am glad that our sport can now move on from the sad revelations that these independent reports revealed.

"My thanks go to the independent experts and the Russian Curling Federation for the support and cooperation that has helped us to reach this position."

Also announced at the congress were two future World Curling competition venues.

They are the Naseby Curling Rink in Naseby, New Zealand for the world qualification event, to be played Jan. 18-23 in 2019 and the European C-division curling championships at the Olympic Ice Rink in Brasov, Romania next April.

Reported by Mark Bisson

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.