Victoria Curling Club duo qualifies for mixed-doubles Olympic trials

The Victoria Curling Club duo of Corey Chester and Taylor Reese-Hansen will have to go through some big names this month at the Canadian mixed-doubles qualifying tournament for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. But they are undeterred.

The 16-team field, ­following the final national qualifier held over the weekend in Banff and Canmore, Alta., has been ­finalized for the Olympic ­trials Dec. 30 to Jan. 4 at the Queens Place Emera Centre in ­Liverpool, N.S. The qualified teams include Chester and Reese-Hansen from the VCC along with names familiar to curling fans such as Jennifer Jones teaming with husband Brent Laing of Barrie, Ont., Rachel Homan with Brendan Bottcher of Beaumont and Spruce Grove, Alta., and Jim and Jaelyn Cotter of Vernon.

Jones skipped Canada to the women’s gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and has won a co-record six Canadian Scotties national championships and is two-time world champion. Homan skipped the Canadian women’s team at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and is a two-time world champion and four-time Scotties national champion as skip. Jim Cotter has won 10 B.C. men’s championships and made 10 Brier national championship appearances, finishing second in 2014, and was also runner-up in the 2014 men’s national Olympic trials for Sochi 2014 before losing to eventual Sochi Olympics gold medallist Brad Jacobs.

Chester is a two-time former B.C. junior men’s champion while Reese-Hansen has skipped rinks at the top echelon in B.C. women’s curling after guiding Camosun College teams to national medals.

“We believe we have a good shot of representing Canada in the Olympics in Italy,” Chester told the Times Colonist.

“There are going to be a lot of good teams in the Olympic ­trials, and mixed doubles is really unpredictable, but we are going there to win,” added the UVic commerce graduate, who works as a financial analyst for the B.C. government’s sport branch.

Mixed-doubles curling became a Winter Olympics sport at Pyeongchang in 2018 with John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes winning gold for Canada before Morris and Homan missed the podium in 2022 at Beijing. It joined the trend of pared-down versions of sports from the Summer Games such as sevens rugby, three-on-three basketball and the upcoming sixes field-lacrosse, and also mixed events from the Summer Olympics in swimming, track, triathlon, badminton archery, judo, ­tennis, table tennis, sailing and ­shooting.

“As for Olympic qualifying in mixed doubles, Corey [Chester] and I are in a good spot and are capable of it,” Reese-Hansen told the Times Colonist.

Chester and Reese-Hansen, the latter who works from the Island for an industrial services company based in her hometown of Kitimat, are among the several headliners out of the Victoria Curling Club, which has produced the last two B.C. men’s champions that have represented the province at the 2023 and 2024 Briers.

“We’ve built up a culture of excellence, and such a density of talent in our club the last five-six years, and we feed off each other’s successes,” said Chester.

“This is a very special club that has put high-performance curling on a pedestal,” Reese-Hansen has noted.

The 16 teams will be divided into two round-robin pools of eight at the Canadian Olympic trials from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2, out of which the top three from each pool will advance to a six-team playoff from Jan. 2-4, from which a victor will emerge. That, however, will not guarantee the Canadian trials winning duo an automatic slide down the 2026 Olympic ice sheet in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Ten nations will gain Olympic berths, including the top eight in the 2025 mixed-doubles world championship April 26 to May 3 in Fredericton, N.B., and the final two through a last-chance qualifier with the dates and venue to be announced.

ROCKING THE HOUSE: The B.C. champion Neil Dangerfield rink from VCC of skip Dangerfield, third Mike Wood, second Darren Boden, lead Glen Allen and alternate Andy Jarzebiak missed the semifinals by the narrowest of margins and placed fifth this month at 6-4 in the Canadian senior men’s championship in Moncton, N.B.

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