Korean pair opens curling at 2026 Olympics

The 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics will open with a ceremony at 8 p.m. on Feb. 6 local time at San Siro Stadium in Milan, launching a 17-day competition schedule.

Several events will begin earlier to accommodate competition logistics. Curling will start on Feb. 4, making it the earliest of the 16 Olympic disciplines to get underway. The mixed doubles event will open the curling competition.

South Korea will be represented in mixed doubles by Kim Sun-young, 33, and Jeong Young-seok, 31, currently ranked second in the world. The pair will effectively launch the Olympics when they take the ice at 7 p.m. on Feb. 4 local time, which is 3:05 a.m. on Feb. 5 in South Korea, at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium. They will face Sweden’s sibling duo Isabella Brano, 29, and Rasmus Brano, 32.

n mixed doubles curling, each team fields one male and one female player. The male player typically handles sweeping, while the female player calls strategy. The Brano siblings, who won the 2024 world championship, follow this conventional division of roles, with older brother Rasmus focused on sweeping and younger sister Isabella directing tactics.

Kim and Jeong take the opposite approach. Kim, who won a silver medal as the second with Team Kim at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, handles powerful sweeping comparable to that of a male player. Jeong manages strategy, despite having no playing background before joining the national team. He previously worked as a performance analyst during the Pyeongchang Paralympics before transitioning into competition. Their “reverse-thinking” strategy is designed to maximize each other’s strengths. Kim said, “Young-seok’s ability to read stone lines is world-class. I may be older, but on the ice, he leads me.”

The pair have also devised a strategy to exploit the Swedish siblings’ vulnerabilities. Jeong said his familiarity with sibling dynamics gives them an edge. “I have a younger sister, so I understand how siblings interact,” he said. “Our aim is to create moments when the opponents lose their composure.” Kim added that the opening match presents an opportunity. “The Branos will be nervous in their first game as well,” she said. “That makes them beatable.”

Kim and Jeong secured South Korea’s first direct Olympic berth in mixed doubles by defeating the world’s top-ranked Australian team of Tali Gill, 27, and Dean Hewitt, 32, by a 10-5 margin in the final playoff of the Olympic qualification tournament in Canada on Dec. 18 last year. At the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, South Korea entered mixed doubles automatically as the host nation, with Jang Hye-ji, 29, and Lee Ki-jung, 31, finishing sixth with a 2-5 record in the eight-team round robin. At the Milan-Cortina Games, 10 teams will compete in a round-robin preliminary, with the top four advancing to the medal rounds.

Kim, who also competed in the women’s event with Team Kim at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, will become the first South Korean curler to appear at three Olympic Games. “We will show how exciting mixed doubles can be,” she said. Jeong, making his Olympic debut, struck a confident note. “We barely made the cut to get here,” he said. “We will open the Olympics for South Korea, and when we come back, we want to return with gold around our necks.”

Kim, who also competed in the women’s events with Team Kim at the 2022 Beijing Games, becomes the first South Korean curler to participate in three Olympics. She said, “We will show how exciting mixed doubles can be.” Jeong, making his Olympic debut, said, “We just made the cut, but we will open the Olympics for South Korea and come home as gold medalists.”


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