Cory Thiesse, Korey Dropkin win U.S. Olympic Mixed Doubles Curling Trials
Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin won the U.S. Olympic Mixed Doubles Curling Trials to move one major step closer to each making their Olympic competition debut in 2026.
Thiesse and Dropkin, the 2023 World champions, defeated Sarah Anderson and Andrew Stopera 8-7 on Saturday (extra end) and then 6-3 on Sunday to sweep the best-of-three championship series in Lafayette, Colorado.
Thiesse and Dropkin aren't qualified for the Olympics yet. They must still earn their spot through international competition later this year.
Their first chance is at the world championship in two months in New Brunswick, Canada. Nations' results at the 2024 and 2025 Worlds are combined to create a ranking that determines the first seven nations to qualify for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games (plus automatically qualified host nation Italy). The U.S. team at 2024 Worlds placed 10th.
After that, a last-chance global qualifying tournament in December will determine the last two Olympic spots. The U.S. successfully qualified a team for the first two Olympic mixed doubles competitions in 2018 and 2022, ultimately placing sixth and eighth.
Thiesse and Dropkin, who live within three miles of each other in Duluth, Minnesota, teamed up in 2022 with the most curling of origin stories.
Thiesse previously played with 2018 Olympic men's team champion skip John Shuster.
Dropkin used to play with Anderson. Dropkin and Stopera are currently on the same men's team that won a U.S. title earlier this month and will be one of the favorites at those Olympic Trials in November in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Thiesse and Dropkin each previously finished runner-up twice at Olympic Trials in either mixed doubles or team events. Thiesse went to the Olympics in 2018 as an alternate for the U.S. women's team and did not see game action.
A year after Thiesse and Dropkin partnered, they became the first Americans to win a world title in mixed doubles.
Nick Zaccardi,
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