Team Canada out of playoff picture after Day 3 of wheelchair mixed doubles championship

Collinda Joseph and Dennis Thiessen, the teammates that make up Canada’s mixed doubles team along with head coach Dana Ferguson and team leader Kyle Turcotte, are seasoned para curlers who have played hundreds of games and thrown thousands of rocks at world wheelchair championships. Often, those rocks have led to points, and those points to have led to wins, but sometimes that isn’t the case.

For this duo, the 2024 World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship at Gangneung Curling Centre in Gangneung, South Korea has been one of those weeks.

Team Finland (Ritva Lampinen and Harry Tuomaala) was winless entering its afternoon meeting with Canada, but after a high-scoring match where both teams posted big multi-point ends, Finland prevailed 9-7.

Canada’s second game of the day against Team England (Karen Aspey and Stewart Pimblett) wasn’t an easy one either. Teams traded deuces in the first two frames, but after falling behind in the third end, draw weight continued to illude the Canadians who, in the end, couldn’t mount a comeback.

After the two losses today, Canada sits at 2-3 and outside of the playoff picture with one game to go in its round robin schedule.

“We’re disappointed,” said Joseph. “We didn’t want the event to go this way and, you know, it was one of those games where we were on the wrong side of the inch and just couldn’t manage to figure out draw weight, and I think that really impacted our games today. We had some good opportunities, but we just didn’t capitalize.”

Despite the outcome, Joseph stayed focused on highs throughout the week and optimistic about the future.

“I think there was some really good communication that we were trying to focus on,” she said. “There were some positive moments in our games this week. Going forward, we know what we need to work on and hopefully next year we’ll have another opportunity and we’ll be able to do better.”

Latvia and Slovakia (4-1) share the lead in Group A, with Estonia (3-1) one game behind.

The United States (4-0) is the only undefeated team left in Group B.

China and Korea (4-0) maintained their perfect records and sit tied for the top of Group C. Both have a game in hand over Japan (4-1), who lurks in the shadows.

The group stage concludes tomorrow when Canada goes toe-to-toe with the United States (Thursday, 6:30 a.m. ET).

The top eight teams from the round robin qualify for playoffs.

The gold and bronze medal games take place Friday at 9 p.m. ET.

All games will be available to watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@curling1.

For live scores, standings, and statistics for the 2024 World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship, go to https://livescores.worldcurling.org/wwhcc/.

This story will be available in French as soon as possible at https://www.curling.ca/category-all-posts-fr/?lang=fr.