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The 2012 World Mens Curling Championship was held in Basel, Switzerland from March 31 April 8. This event is one of the curling qualifiers for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Each team earns points for their 2012 and 2013 results and the top seven nations (incl. Russia as a host) will earn a spot to go to the Winter Olympics. New Zealand beat Switzerland and remained in medal contention until they were beaten by the US on their last game of the day. After beating Switzerland the same day gave them their fifth victory of the whole event which made this team New Zealands best-ever performance at a world championship. Skip Peter de Boer, said after they won against Switzerland: "We've got some nice momentum going. We ground that out, we were pretty ugly in a couple of ends and very fortunate in the fourth when their stone picked up, which gave us the chance of three. He further commented; "This keeps us right in the middle but our ultimate goal is gaining Olympic qualification points. A top-half finish here maybe gets us a toe on the plane to the Olympics. We just need to continue it and, who knows?" The squad coached by Peter Becker (Peter de Boer, Sean Becker, Scott Becker, Kenny Thomson, Phil Dowling) ended up finishing fifth and by doing so collected invaluable 2014 Winter Olympic qualifying points. After the match, New Zealand skip Peter de Boer said; "Overall we're delighted with where we ended up. We came here thinking that if we played to our potential we were good enough to win a few games, and that would mean meeting our goal of gaining Olympic qualification points. We've certainly done that, and we've shown we can foot it with the best in the world. This was possible with minimum preparation. De Boer further said; I think we've demonstrated the potential to achieve real results if we have some backing, so we'll certainly be putting the case for that when we get back home." New Zealand curler Sean Becker was awarded the 2012 world curling federation Collie Campbell memorial award. This award is given to a competitor who best exemplifies the traditional values of skill, honesty, fair play, sportsmanship and friendship during the event. The winner is nominated for by fellow players at the event.
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