Unlucky break for Team Canada leads to first winless day at world championship

Sometimes, no matter how well you play or how hard you try, the curling gods just aren’t on your side.

Such was the case for Team Canada as round robin play elapsed the midway point on Day 4 of the 2024 World Wheelchair Curling Championship at Gangneung Curling Centre in Gangneung, South Korea.

“We made a lot of shots today,” said Canadian skip Mark Ideson, whose team includes fourth Jon Thurston, third Ina Forrest, second Gil Dash, alternate Chrissy Molnar, head coach Mick Lizmore, and team leader Kyle Paquette. “We were just on the wrong side of the inch.”

Ideson believed his crew played well in its afternoon tilt with the United States (3-4), skipped by Matthew Thums, but also gave credit to his opponent.

“We had a solid game and so did the U.S.,” said Ideson. “They had some key makes in key moments and had us on the ropes the whole game. It was a great battle from start to finish.”

Coming home tied with hammer, Thurston needed to navigate a tricky port in hopes of finding the four-foot for the win but ticked a guard and came up short. It was an untimely miss for Canada—one of only a handful throughout the game—that resulted in a 7-5 win for the Americans.

Misfortune carried into the evening draw against Hugh Nibloe and the defending bronze medalists from Scotland (1-6) when a hit for one rolled out and left three Scottish stones counting. In the end, it was a deficit the Canadians couldn’t overcome as Scotland went on to win its first game of the tournament 8-2.

Despite the results, Ideson stayed confident in his team’s approach and leaned on their experience in world championships to pull positives out of a winless day.

“Yeah, just a couple tough games midweek, sort of like kilometre 21 of a marathon,” he said. “It would’ve been nice to pick up a win today but we’re still in this thing, we’re in a good position, and we’re in control our fate. We’ll prioritize rest and recovery tonight and get back out there first thing tomorrow.”

Viljo Petersson-Dahl and the Swedes (4-3) have won four straight after adding two wins today against Estonia (1-6), skipped by Ain Villau, and Czechia (2-5), skipped by Dana Selnekovicova.

Last year’s gold medalist China (5-2), skipped by Haitao Wang, dropped its second game of the round robin to Hyeonchul Lee’s team from Korea (5-2), but rebounded with a win over formerly undefeated Latvia (6-1), skipped by Ojars Briedis.

Italy (4-3), skipped by Egidio Marchese, split its games today, winning over Jostein Stordahl’s team from Norway (4-3) but losing to Slovakia (3-4) and skip Radoslav Duris.

The penultimate day of the 12-team round robin starts tomorrow when Canada meets with Latvia (Tuesday, 7 p.m. ET) and Czechia (Wednesday, 5 a.m. ET).

The top six teams from the round robin advance to the playoffs, with the top two receiving a bye while the remaining four play in the first round. The gold and bronze medal games will take place Friday, March 8 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 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.