Canada is off to another rough start in curling at the Winter Olympics.
Canada’s Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant were officially eliminated from medal contention Sunday with a 9-5 loss to South Korea’s Kim Seon-yeong and Jeong Yeong-seok in the penultimate draw of the round robin at Milano Cortina 2026.
Canada’s fifth loss in a row dropped the team’s record to 3-5, meaning Peterman and Gallant can’t qualify for the semifinals.
It marks the second Olympics in a row Canada will miss the podium in mixed doubles after Rachel Homan and John Morris fell short in 2022. Kaitlyn Lawes and Morris won gold for Canada in mixed doubles when the event made its Olympic debut in 2018.
“To be honest, we just struggled with the ice conditions,” Gallant told CBC Olympics after the loss to South Korea. “We were loving it early and then it just changed. Just was a bit of an uphill battle after that. We tried, we’re giving it our all. We just kind of got on the wrong side of the inch once that happened.”
Canada won just one curling medal in 2022 — a bronze for Brad Gushue’s men’s team.
Homan and Brad Jacobs will skip Canada’s women’s and men’s entries at this Olympics later this week. Gallant is a member of Jacobs’ team.
The Canadians cut the deficit to 6-5 in the sixth against South Korea, but the Koreans got two in the seventh and then left Peterman with a near-impossible shot to try to tie it on last rock in the eighth.
“It’s tough reflecting on the week,” Peterman told CBC Olympics. “We battled hard, we fought to the end. We really worked hard to figure out the ice and try to figure out how to make shots on it. We were close in a lot of games and just not quite there.”
The Canadians play their final game on Monday against Switzerland (4:05 a.m. ET / 1:05 a.m. PT, CBC Gem, Sportsnet+).
Great Britain, the U.S., Sweden and Italy have secured the semifinal spots.
