CHAMPION: Abe Wins Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic

Fourth
Tetsuro
Shimizu

SKIP
Shinya
Abe

Second
Hayato
Sato

Lead
Haruto
Ouchi

Shinya Abe (Sapporo, JPN) won 6-1 over Kotaro Noguchi (Sendai-shi, JPN) in the Final of the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic, held August 7 - 10 at the Hokkaido Bank Curling Stadium in Sapporo, Japan. To advance to the championship game, Abe won 5-4 over Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (Karuizawa, JPN) in the semifinals of the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic in Sapporo, Japan;

Abe finished 3-1 in the 10-team qualifying round. . In their opening game, Abe defeated Eito Nakagawa (Hokkaido, JPN) 11-1, then won 6-5 against Koki Ogiwara (Sapporo, JPN) and 8-1 against P.N. Raju (Hyderabad, IN). Abe went on to lose 5-3 against Takumi Maeda (Kitami, JPN) in their final qualifying round match.

For winning the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic Championship title, Abe earned 17.250 world rankings points along with the $9,406CDN first prize cheque. Abe move up 1 spots after posting a net gain of 8.45 points improving upon their best 1 results so far this season, ranking 19th overall with 168.250 total points on the World Ranking Standings. Abe ranks 2nd overall on the Year-to-Date rankings with 17.250 points earned so far this season.

RECORD	W	L	T	PCT	HMR	STL	1PT	EEH	EES

SCORING	ENDs	PF	PA	PF/G	PA/G	+/-	EF/G	EA/G	PF/E	PA/E	BE/G

WITH HAMMER	ENDs	PF	PA	BE	4s	3s	2s	PF/E	PA/E	HE	SD

WITHOUT HAMMER	ENDs	PF	PA	BE	4s	3s	2s	PF/E	PA/E	FE	SE

2023: Kohsuke Hirata
Kohsuke Hirata, Shingo Usui, Ryota Meguro, Yoshiya Miura
Kitami, JPN
2022: ByeongJin Jeong
ByeongJin Jeong, JeongJae Lee, MinWoo Kim, Taehwan Kim
Seoul, KOR
2019: Yuta Matsumura
Yuta Matsumura, Tetsuro Shimizu, Yasumasa Tanida, Shinya Abe, Kosuke Aita
Kitami, JPN
2018: Masaki Iwai
Go Aoki, Masaki Iwai, Ryotaro Shukuya, Koki Ogiwara, Kei Kamada
Sapporo, JPN
2017: Soo-Hyuk Kim
Soo-Hyuk Kim, Taehwan Kim, Jongduk Park, Yoonho Nam
Gangwon, KOR
2016: Karsten Sturmay
Karsten Sturmay, Tristan Steinke, Chris Kennedy, Caleb Boorse
Edmonton, AB

John Epping (Photo: Curling Canada) has qualified for the 2025 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials, set to begin November in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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