The Karuizawa International Curling Championships is a

curling Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns slidi ...

bonspiel held annually since the Olympic Games in Nagano at the SCAP Karuizawa Arena in Kariuzawa, Japan. The bonspiel is held to commemorate the curling event at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, the first official curling event in the Olympic programme since the

1924 Winter Olympics The 1924 Winter Olympics, officially known as the I Olympic Winter Games (french: Iers Jeux olympiques d'hiver) and commonly known as Chamonix 1924 ( frp, Chamôni 1924), were a winter multi-sport event which was held in 1924 in Chamonix, Franc ...

. It is also held to help promote curling throughout Japan. The event became a

World Curling Tour The World Curling Tour (WCT) is a group of curling bonspiels featuring the best male, female, and mixed doubles curlers in the world. History The World Curling Tour was founded by former World Champion Ed Lukowich, with later assistance from John ...

event in 2014.

Format

Current format

A total of 24 teams (12 men's and 12 women's teams) are invited each year to participate in the championship. The teams play a two-pool

round robin Round-robin may refer to: Computing * Round-robin DNS, a technique for dealing with redundant Internet Protocol service hosts * Round-robin networks, communications networks made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology * Round-robin schedu ...

tournament with games of eight ends, and the top six teams of each gender play eight-end games in the final round.

Previous format

Prior to 2013, a total of 16 teams (8 men's and 8 women's teams) were invited each year to participate in the championship. Five teams of each gender were chosen from foreign nations based on performances at the most recent

World Curling Championships The World Curling Championships are the annual world championships for curling, organized by the World Curling Federation and contested by national championship teams. There are men's, women's and mixed doubles championships, as well as men's a ...

, while three teams were chosen from within Japan. The teams were chosen as follows: The eight teams of each gender played a

tournament with games of eight ends, and the top four teams of each gender played ten-end games in the final round.

Champions (1999-2009)

Past Champions (since 2010)

Notes

References

{{Reflist

External links

Karuizawa CC HomepageOfficial website
Sport in Nagano Prefecture

Curling Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns slidi ...

Curling competitions in Japan