By Jolene Latimer
Play enough elite curling and there’s one thing you’ll learn to be on guard about: becoming the team everyone wants to beat.
“It was tough coming in with a target on our backs, just given not even this year that we’ve been playing well, but the last couple years,” said Team Homan’s Emma Miskew after the Canadian Olympic Curling Trials, where she punched her ticket to the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
The extraordinary run that Team Homan has been on has set the bar in women’s curling, but that standard can create its own sort of pressure. “Sometimes that can cause teams to rise to the occasion when they play against you,” Miskew told reporters in the scrum. “You get everyone’s best game, it could go either way.”
Lately, the team answering that challenge has been China’s Team Wang. They beat Team Homan in the Pan Continental final, reached the podium at Worlds for the first time in more than a decade, and pushed Homan to one-point games in two other recent matchups (the Pan Continental round robin and the AMJ Masters). Their rise hasn’t been loud, but it has been steady. Inside their camp, there’s a belief that they’re only just starting to come into their potential.
Which raises the next question: Who exactly is this group pushing so close to the top of women’s curling?
Getting to know Team Wang
Nestled in China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province is Harbin, a cold-weather city shaped by industry and early Russian settlement. Its distinct architecture makes the streets feel more Eastern European than Northern Chinese. Winters here routinely fall well below freezing, making Harbin fertile ground for curling to take root.
It’s a city Team Wang’s skip, Wang Rui, knows well — she was born and raised there. It’s where she fell in love with curling.
In recent years, Harbin has become one of China’s main hubs for winter sport and tourism. Over eight days last February, more than 600,000 people passed through its vast Ice and Snow World park — a temporary city of illuminated ice structures that included a replica of the Taj Mahal.
The region has also hosted major events like the 2025 Asian Winter Games, all part of the country’s growing obsession with winter sports. National figures indicate a rapid expansion of winter sports in China. In the 2023–24 season, more than 57 million people took part in activities like skating, skiing, curling and hockey, and winter-related trips totaled roughly 385 million — a jump of more than a third from the previous year. Harbin saw the sharpest rise: the city recorded over 87 million visits, a threefold increase, with tourism revenue climbing to about $17.4 billion, up roughly fivefold year over year. The country plans to keep growing its ice and snow offerings, aiming to reach tourism revenue valuing $169 billion by 2027.
Curling has been part of this growth. “Curling in China is popular,” said Chinese national coach Tom Tan. “A lot of people watch it on TV. Even people who don’t know what it is. Curling is a TV sport. You can think about hard plays differently than the players, but you can still join in. So a lot of people in China love curling.”
It was against this developing backdrop that Wang first stepped onto the curling ice at the age of 14. Sixteen years later, after six trips to Worlds, the skip is familiar with the pressure and expectations that go hand-in-hand with being an elite athlete in the country.
“In China, when you’re young and achieve a good result at curling, you can be a professional athlete,” said Tan. “You can say it’s a job. In China now, it’s become the model for young people. It’s a duty on Team Wang’s shoulders now and they’re very respected.”
Like Rachel Homan, Milano Cortina will be Wang’s third Games. Also like Homan, Wang is still looking for her first trip to the podium. About two seasons ago, her team formed into its newest iteration: Han Yu as third, Dong Ziqi as second and Jiang Jiayi as lead. Together, they’ve achieved more success for China than the country’s women’s curling program has seen in decades.
“When they first started international events in September 2024, we won some games and realized it was very important to build confidence and set up team dynamics,” said Tan. “We’re trying to become the best in the world. Every day they work so hard to try to achieve their dream.”
After a bronze at the 2024 Pan Continentals secured China its first world championship berth since 2021, Team Wang returned to the sport’s biggest stage with a skip who knew it well. Wang Rui made her Worlds debut in 2014 as a second — the same year Rachel Homan lost the final to Eve Muirhead — and her last appearance in 2019 ended one win short of the playoffs. This time, she broke through, leading China to a 9–4 win over Korea for bronze at the 2025 Worlds, the country’s first world medal since 2011.
“My team has become stronger in the last two seasons,” said Tan. “It’s not easy for us. Some girls were injured. But, we’re trying to achieve our goal in Milan, at the Games. So, we’re trying to fight — we try every time to do our best.”
The team has continued putting pressure on curling’s top contenders. This fall, at the 2025 Pan Continentals, they beat Homan 7-6 in the final to take home gold.
“It was really, really amazing for us. It means a lot, especially because it’s the last Pan Continentals,” said Tan. Beating Homan to take the top spot gave the result extra weight. “It was only one win against Homan,” he said. “But it was good for sure.”
Homan has become not just competition but the model China studies most closely: “First, we have to admit that Team Homan is the greatest team in the world,” he said. “Team Homan is our role model, so we kind of try to copy them. But it’s not easy. When we play them, it’s a lot of pressure on our shoulders for sure. But what can you do? When you’re under pressure, you’re only going to make faults on yourself and your performance. We try to place our stones in the right spot and aim to compete until the very last end, the very last stone with them.”
Still, Tan admits that there is work to do. Team Wang’s performance at the Slams this fall has been less than ideal. At the AMJ Masters in London they finished in eighth spot, despite pushing Homan to an 8-7 score in the round robin. Then, at KIOTI GSOC Tahoe, they finished in 15th place, with a 1-3 record in the round robin.
“During the games we still saw some gaps with the top teams — especially Team Homan, Team Gin (Korea) and Team Japan,” Tan said. “We just need more experience at the international, huge events. Execution for setting up rocks, angles and timing are what we need to improve in the future if we want to go to the top.”
Tan is confident that Wang has what it takes to make the adjustments necessary to finish on the podium. “Wang Rui is an athlete who doesn’t give up easily,” he said. “Her teammates are the same. She looks small, but she has a strong heart and a never-give-up spirit. She’s a tough one.”
If Tan is right about Wang’s refusal to back down, then Miskew is right about something else, too: Team Homan will keep getting Team Wang’s best game. As Miskew put it, Homan’s ready for that: “That’s our style right now: We find ways to win games that could go either way.”
The two teams go at it Monday at Milano Cortina 2026, with first rocks being thrown at 3:05 a.m. ET. With China 2-2 and Canada 1-3, a win will be crucial for both sides at keeping their Olympic playoff hopes alive.
