Canada punches ticket to gold medal game at world wheelchair championship

Team Canada will play for gold at the 2024 World Wheelchair Curling Championship at Gangneung Curling Centre in Gangneung, South Korea.

This year’s Canadian team, made up of skip and lead-rock thrower Mark Ideson, fourth Jon Thurston, third Ina Forrest, second Gil Dash, alternate Chrissy Molnar, head coach Mick Lizmore, and team leader Kyle Paquette, will vie to win its first gold medal at a world wheelchair championship in over a decade, when Ideson and Forrest competed with the Canadian team that won in Sochi in 2013. Since then, its only podium finishes came in 2020 and 2023 when Canada came away with silver medals.

The semi-final stand-off was a rematch from the final round robin draw Thursday night against Sweden, skipped by Viljo Petersson-Dahl, when Ideson and Co. won in an extra end.

“Sweden always brings out the best in us,” said Ideson. “It was a great battle tonight and it feels good to come away with a win.”

Both sides were cautious in the first four ends and scoring chances were limited. After a stolen single in the second for Sweden, the Canadians settled for one in the third, then put on a force of their own in the four to go into halftime trailing 2-1.

The turning point came after a miss from Swedish fourth Marcus Holm on his last rock, which gave Canada a chance to post the first multi-point score of the game. Thurston took advantage and made his draw to the eight-foot and put the Canadians ahead 3-2 into the seventh. Then, Canada stole one more in seven, and ultimately ran Sweden out of rocks in the final frame to win 4-2.

“Yeah, it was a cautious game for sure,” said Ideson. “There’s not a ton of mistakes out there so you have to capitalize on the ones that you get. You know, that was sort of our game plan going in—just to be patient—and it worked out this time.”

On the opposite side of the rink, Norway, skipped by Jostein Stordahl, trumped the defending champions from China 7-3 to earn its spot in the final. The last time Norway won gold was at this same venue in 2017.

“Norway’s a good team and they just beat the number one ranked team in the world so they’re coming in hot,” said Ideson. “We’ll do some strategizing tonight and get ready to go for the morning.”

Canada beat Norway 8-0 in round robin play.

Sweden will play China, skipped by Haitao Wang, in the bronze medal game.

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 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.