Wang Zhiyu (Chinese: 王智宇; pinyin: Wáng Zhìyǔ; born August 24, 1996, in Harbin)[2] is a Chinese curler. He currently plays second on the Chinese men's curling team skipped by Xu Xiaoming.
Career
As a junior curler, Wang threw last rocks for the Chinese junior men's team at the 2017 and 2018 World Junior Curling Championships, skipping the team in 2018. In 2017, Wang, skip Yuan Ming Jie, and front end Li Hong Bo and Kang Xin Long finished with a 2–7 record. In 2018, Wang led his team of Tian Jiafeng, Wang Xiangkun, and Zhang Zezhong to a 3–6 record. The team missed the playoffs in both tournaments.
The next season, Wang was selected to be the second on the Chinese men's team for the 2022 Winter Olympics, held in Beijing.[6] The team also included skip Ma Xiuyue, Zou Qiang, Xu Jingtao and Jiang Dongxu. Despite not playing a single international competition before the Games, the team fared quite well, finishing the round robin with a 4–5 record. This included defeating higher-seeded teams such as Switzerland's Peter de Cruz, Norway's Steffen Walstad, and Italy's Joël Retornaz.[7] Ultimately, they finished in a four-way tie for fifth place; however, their head to head wins over Switzerland and Norway placed them alone in fifth place at the end of the competition.[8]
