Team Canada finds reps against key competition ahead of Milano Cortina

On the heels of its official nomination to the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games, Team Canada, led by skip Mark Ideson (London, Ont.), third Jon Thurston (Dunsford, Ont.), second Ina Forrest (Spallumcheen, B.C.), lead Collinda Joseph (Ottawa), fifth Gilbert Dash (Kipling, Sask.), and coaches Mick Lizmore (London, Ont.) and Dana Ferguson (Stoney Plain, Alta.), finished its week in fifth place at the 19th International Wheelchair Curling Tournament in Prague, Czech Republic.

Team Canada ended the tournament with a 5-2 record, including a friendly match with the Czech host team on Thursday morning. One of the Canadian losses came on Saturday morning in a deciding game against Sweden en route to the playoffs. Although Team Canada had started with the lead, the Sweden squad quickly pulled away and finished the Saturday morning draw with a 4-2 win.

While the Canadians easily navigated past the Latvian team 11-5 on Friday morning, their game against Team Slovakia later that afternoon had a different pace entirely. The game lead off with a slow start as a few mistakes that left Team Canada chasing. With Team Canada firmly in control of the final end, the Slovakian skip, Radoslav Ďuriš, made a fantastic in-off with his last rock that eventually resulted in a steal of 1 and sealed the 6-5 win in Slovakia’s favour.

“The first two games stood out because the rocks were a bit tricky to work with,” said Forrest. “You start getting in your head thinking, oh boy, we need a lot of practice, but then the ice improved. I had better rocks to work with, so it felt better as we went on.”

Saturday’s afternoon game against Team Italy quickly had Team Canada up on the board with a four-ender in the second. In the third end, Team Italy’s last rock was heavy to give up a steal of two to the Canadians and sent them ahead by five points. Although the game resulted in an 8-2 win for Team Canada, it wouldn’t be enough to send them to compete for gold on Sunday.

However, on Sunday morning, Sweden was facing three threatening Canadian stones with just the skip’s rocks left. Sweden’s Viljo Petersson-Dahl needed to figure out how to score three to force the game into an extra end, but his efforts came up just short and handed Team Canada a 5-2 win.

In a rematch of the first game of the competition, Team Canada overcame Team Latvia 11-3 in the consolation final on Sunday afternoon. The match itself quite closely resembled the same faceoff on Friday morning that finished 11-5 in Team Canada’s favour.

On Sunday afternoon, Team Canada made quick work of the Latvian team, with a four-ender to wrap up the second end.

“That’s the way ends go sometimes,” said Forrest of the second end. “Before you know it, you’ve got a four, and it really shifts the momentum in your favour.”

The rest of the game followed a similar pace, and eventually the Canadians sealed the game with a five-ender in the sixth.

With no pre-draw practices, LSDs (Last Stone Draws) were taken after each game. Because the other pool had fewer teams and therefore fewer games, Canada’s Pool A LSD scores were only counted for three draws instead of four. While a 2-2 record wasn’t expected to send the Canadians directly to the gold-medal game, the LSD tiebreak left them off that path by just a few centimetres.

Nonetheless, the value of the international competition before the team’s trip to Italy in March cannot be understated. In its seven games this week, Team Canada faced five Paralympic-level teams.

“This was a good opportunity for us to meet up with a lot of teams, and now we can go back and practice so we’re ready for the Paralympics,” said Forrest. “I don’t think we’re feeling the pressure quite yet. We’ve had a lot of competitions at the start of the season, so I think going forward we just have to go back and make sure all our technicals are in perfect order.”

While the Canadians battled in a stacked pool over the weekend, the practice and reps on the ice were exactly what they set out for when they took off for Europe on Tuesday.

“We made decisions early in the season to prioritize getting a lot of competition in before the Games,” said Kyle Paquette, Director of Wheelchair Curling at Curling Canada. “We knew the team was very experienced, but at the end of the day we still had to get comfortable in some new roles. Coming to Prague was a really important turning point for this team, and we’re really pleased with where we’re at with just over 100 days to go to the Games.

“We have more clarity than ever on a few things we need to do to prepare ourselves to be a strong medal contender in Cortina.”

On the road to Milano Cortina, Team Canada has an upcoming December training camp in Toronto, the Leduc Mixed Event in January, and one final training camp at the beginning of February before staging camp in Italy starting a few weeks thereafter.