OLYMPICS: US women's curling team beat Norway to earn ticket to Milano Cortina Games

Tabitha Peterson’s United States squad secured the final qualifying berth for the women’s curling event at next year’s Milano Cortina Winter Olympics with an 8–4 comeback victory over Marianne Roervik’s Norway on Thursday.

The win came just one day after the U.S. men’s team clinched their own Olympic spot, ensuring full American representation across all three curling disciplines at the 2026 Games.

Peterson and her rink had to battle for the result at the Kelowna Curling Club in British Columbia, Canada. After falling behind 3–0 early, the Americans responded with a three-point third end to tie the game. A series of key steals in later ends then propelled them toward the decisive win.

“We knew that if something happened early, there was still plenty of time to fight back—and that’s exactly what we did,” Peterson said. “It’s very special to qualify for the Olympics, especially with this group of girls. I can’t wait to get there, perform, and show the world what we can do.”

Norway entered the matchup after a narrow 6–5 loss to Japan in their first playoff game on Wednesday.

In Thursday’s final men’s playoff, Xu Xiaoming’s China defeated Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi’s Japan 9–4 to claim the last available Olympic spot. Xu, now 41, will make his third Olympic appearance—and his first as skip—after competing under Wang Fengchun in Vancouver 2010 and Liu Rui in Sochi 2014.

“We’re very excited. We’ve worked so hard this week. We had to battle back from two tough losses and fight hard for that win,” Xu said.

China had previously fallen 9–4 in Wednesday’s opening playoff game against the Daniel Casper-led U.S. team.

The curling events at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are scheduled for February 4–22 in Cortina d’Ampezzo. -Aadi Nair in Nashik, India; Editing by Peter Rutherford/Reuters