Team Canada displays resilience to hold undefeated streak at the 2026 Paralympic Games

CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy — After a pressure-packed day for Team Canada at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games, it came out on the other side with two wins to improve its record to 6-0 and take the top spot in the standings.

Tuesday’s schedule was one that was circled on the calendar for the Canadian contingent of skip Mark Ideson (London, Ont.); vice-skip/third Jon Thurston (Dunsford, Ont.); second Ina Forrest (Spallumcheen, B.C.); lead Collinda Joseph (Ottawa); fifth Gilbert Dash (Kipling, Sask.); and coaches Mick Lizmore and Dana Ferguson, with two of the top teams lined up on the same day.

Team Canada outplayed Team China Tuesday morning 9-4 and narrowly beat Team Sweden in the evening, 6-5.

“Those were two really strong opponents that we played today,” said Thurston. “Great game this morning against China. We brought our best. It was a bit of a battle tonight. Sweden’s a great team. We had a lot of back and forth.”

While things were not going Sweden’s way in the first half of play, the game turned on its head in the second half as the ice got trickier.

The sixth and seventh ends saw lots of rocks in play. “Let’s go, Canada!” cheers erupted to support the undefeated Team Canada, even after a triple for Sweden came in the seventh end.

Sweden had forced the Canadian squad to look to unfamiliar paths to limit the damage. Viljo Petersson Dahl, the Swedish skip, used his last stone for a great in-off to remove the pinned Canadian rock that eventually led to a steal of three. The game went to the eighth end, 5-3 in Sweden’s favour.

But the team’s resilience has been the theme of the week, as the game against Sweden wasn’t the only one that came down to the last rock.

“We’ve faced some pressure so far in our games, and we haven’t buckled,” said Thurston. “We’ve stayed calm through it. We believe in everybody, and we can string our shots together to score multiple points in an end. We’re all calm in those situations, and that serves us well.”

Joseph, Forrest, and Thurston made some great shots to give Sweden trouble late, and Petersson Dahl’s first rock rolled just too far to the centre. With two Canadian stones splitting the house, it was up to Ideson to make the hit and stick it for the win, a shot that he had to make twice.

“We had to really work on the sheet today,” said Ideson. “We’ve been trying to figure out that sheet for a while, and today, it was a whole new beast. I hadn’t been hitting well all game, and so it was really nice to make those two at the end.”

Leading up to the game against Sweden, Canada had three blowouts, one unexpectedly against the reigning Paralympic champion, Team China.

Opportunity came early for Canada Tuesday morning. China, ordinarily a strong-hitting team with a low miss rate, made an error in the first end that gave Canada an opportunity to get more rocks in play and split the house to start the game with a deuce.

Even without the unforced errors from the Chinese team, the Canadians pulled together an impenetrable team performance through seven ends.

“It felt like a gold-medal game, really,” said Joseph. “It was incredible. This is the first time I’ve ever been part of a win against that team in international play, and to have it happen today was just incredible. I felt like everybody was jelling. We just were finding everything right today, and it was an incredible feeling.”

Team Canada was facing two Chinese stones in the fourth end and looked at a draw to the button to make it as difficult as possible to concede three points, but Chinese skip Haitao Wang came around the other side to squeak past his own guard and tie the game at 3-3.

The game was close until the seventh end. After a fantastic setup by Joseph’s lead rocks and the great team effort that followed, Canada was sitting three with only the skips’ final rocks left. Wang ended up jamming on his own stone to leave a draw for Ideson for four points.

“China’s the reigning Paralympic champion and reigning world champion for good reason; they’re a great team,” said Thurston. “We bought our best game today, so it was a really tight battle. Collinda made a pair of beauties, and we were just able to get a good setup in that seventh end and capitalized with four to close out the game. The whole team just played amazingly.”

Also supporting Team Canada are team leader Kyle Paquette; team physiotherapist Sari Shatil; team physician Dr. Steven Macaluso; performance science lead Kyle Turcotte; and family and friends coordinator Wendy Morgan.

Team Canada will face Team Slovakia at 3:05 p.m. (all times Eastern) Wednesday afternoon.

For live scoring, team lineups, and standings, CLICK HERE.

All of Canada’s games will be broadcast on a variety of platforms by CBC, the official Paralympic rights-holder in Canada. CLICK HERE for the CBC broadcast schedule.

This story will be posted in French as soon as possible at https://www.curling.ca/fr/nouvelles-media/