Peterman and Gallant shift focus to 2026 after World Mixed Doubles Championship

In the short term, Friday at the 2025 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship will be a difficult day to forget for Canada’s Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant.

But you can be safely assured that it will provide no shortage of motivation for the wife-and-husband tandem from Chestermere, Alta., as they start their preparations to compete for Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, Italy.

Peterman and Gallant suffered a pair of tough losses Friday at Willie O’Ree Place in Fredericton — first, a 7-5 setback to Estonia’s Marie Kaldvee and Harri Lill in the quarterfinal, and then an 8-4 loss to Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin of the United States in a game that decided fifth and sixth place.

A huge goal for the Canadian pair when they arrived in Fredericton was to clinch a berth for Canada in the 2026 Winter Olympics mixed doubles competition, and while it won’t be made official until the World Mixed Doubles is complete, that job was completed on Friday.

Then the focus turned to the medal podium, so falling short of that goal wasn’t easy to take.

“Accomplishing that Olympic berth, it was definitely a big goal for us,” said Peterman. “But at the end of the day, it was a world championship. We wanted to be on the podium. So it’s a little bittersweet right now.”

World Curling is expected to officially announce on Saturday that Canada will indeed be one of the competing countries in Italy.

Peterman and Gallant will be nominated to the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), and the official announcement of Peterman and Gallant as the first members of the Canadian Olympic team will be made Monday in Toronto by the COC.

“Our first mission was to qualify for the Olympics; we accomplished that,” said Gallant. “I’m proud of us for getting that done. And we battled today; we tried our hardest right till the very end. The results didn’t come today, but there’s lots we can learn and that we can take to Italy next year.”

Host country Italy has an automatic Olympic berth, and it’s expected that Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Scotland (competing as Great Britain), Switzerland and the United States also will be announced in the Olympic field.

Countries that didn’t qualify in Fredericton will get one more shot at a berth for the Winter Games at the Olympic Qualification Event in December in Kelowna, B.C., where the final two competing countries will be decided.

“I’m super happy that Brett and Jocelyn have fulfilled that mission and are going to be great reps for us in Cortina,” said national mixed doubles coach Scott Pfeifer. “There’s honestly 10 or 12 teams here that could have easily been one of those eight teams going to the Olympics. So we’re just happy we’re one of them. I know Jocelyn and Brett are going do everything they absolutely can to prepare for representing Canada in Cortina.”

The gold-medal game Saturday will feature reigning Olympic champs Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner of Italy against Jennifer Dodds and Bruce Mouat of Scotland after they prevailed in semifinals Friday night. Italy defeated Estonia 7-6 in an extra end, while Scotland turned back Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt of Australia 9-6. Estonia and Australia will play for bronze on Saturday.

Team Canada, meanwhile, will begin mapping out its plan to get ready for the 2026 Olympics with Pfeifer and team coach Laine Peters.

“We’re very grateful that Curling Canada has given us that opportunity to have this long to prepare,” said Peterman. “We were able to come here and see what we need to do and see what we need to work on to be on that podium in Italy.”

World Curling’s live-streaming platform The Curling Channel will be the only way to watch games from the World Mixed Doubles Championship.

For the latest scores, draw and list of teams, CLICK HERE.

The French version of this story will be posted as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/?lang=fr.