Thurston has golden week for Canada

Dunsford-area wheelchair curler Jon Thurston had a dream week that he won’t soon forget at the Milano-Cortina Winter Paralympic Games.

Not only did his team become the first wheelchair curling team ever to go through the round robin undefeated at 9-0, they saved their best for last, knocking off the defending Paralympic mixed team curling champions, the People’s Republic of China, to win Canada’s first gold in mixed team wheelchair curling since 2014.

For those readers unfamiliar with mixed wheelchair curling as a sport, it was first introduced at the Paralympic Games in 2006. Known as “the roaring game” because of the sound the stone produces while traveling over the ice, wheelchair curling is a difficult sport that Canada initially dominated, winning gold in 2010 and 2014. With sweeping not allowed, throws must be very precise to score points.

The sport has two disciplines – the mixed team event and mixed doubles. Team Canada, made up of skip Mark Ideson, Thurston playing third, second Ina Forrest, lead Collinda Joseph and alternate Gil Dash, competed in the mixed event with opponents from China, Sweden, Korea, Italy, the United States, Latvia, Slovakia, Norway and Great Britain. China, Canada and Sweden entered the event ranked one, two and three in the world and were heavily favoured to medal.

Mixed team medal events have four players on each team and must include both male and female athletes. The aim of the game is to deliver the stone as close as possible to the centre of the target, called the house. During each end every player throws two stones for a total of eight stones per team. A team can score multiple points if there are two or more stones closer to the centre of the house than any of the opponent’s stones. .

The stone can be thrown using the hand or an extender. Stones must be delivered from a stationary wheelchair. An athlete’s feet can not touch the ice and the wheels of the chair must be in contact with the ice. The extender has a bracket that fits over the handle on the stone.  The extender can add speed and direction to the stone being put into play. Players can choose whether to throw the stone alone or with a teammate who holds the wheelchair steady. Curling stones are made of granite and weigh up to 44 pounds.

Thurston and his teammates won a bronze at the Paralympics in 2022, and arrived in Milano-Cortina with the goal to win gold and return Canada to its position of supremacy as a world wheelchair curling power.

In a pre-competition news scrum, hosted by the World Curling Federation, Ideson had nothing but praise for Thurston, who at 42 is the youngest member of Team Canada.

“Jon is a details orientated player,” Ideson said. “He is a great communicator and a great strategist.”

Thurston probably delivered the shot of the tournament in a round-robin game against Norway, engineering a finesse double takeout that caught the attention of curlers all over the world, both able-bodied and fellow Paralympians.