CORTINA D\u2019AMPEZZO, Italy \u2014 The only thing Canada\u2019s wheelchair curling team can be accused of is being too good.<\/p>\n
They needed only seven of the nine matches to qualify for the Paralympic mixed team semi-finals and, after taking North American bragging rights with a 7-3 win over the U.S. in the final game Thursday, became the first team in Paralympic history to win 100 per cent of their round-robin matches.<\/p>\n
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Canada took down world No. 1 China 9-4 in the seventh session Tuesday morning and returned that evening to beat Sweden (6-5) with the final throw of the match. This team has many ways of winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou still want to make the best shots you can and have a perfect record. Why wouldn\u2019t we want to win every game?\u201d Ina Forrest said Wednesday after Canada beat Slovakia 9-6. She throws second and has become indispensable on a Canada team that has not stopped achieving since 2006, when wheelchair curling debuted at the Turin Games.<\/p>\n
Canada have made the podium in all five Paralympic Winter Games at which curling has featured, with Forrest on the last four of those teams. They won gold in the first three, victorious over Great Britain in 2006 and triumphing over South Korea on home soil (2010, Vancouver) before beating Russia in Russia at the 2014 Sochi Games. They\u2019ve brought back bronze medals from the past two editions.<\/p>\n
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Compare them to Canada\u2019s Olympic men\u2019s team, who won gold in Cortina three weeks ago. The major difference between that team and this one is how they get to the medal matches.<\/p>\n
The Olympic men were accused of cheating at the Olympics by Sweden<\/a>, who said they had illegally touched their stone once it passed the hog line (where athletes must release it). That led to swearing and arguments on the ice and became an international headline. A day later, the Canadian women\u2019s team was called for that same violation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now their wheelchair athletes have gone viral \u2014 for all the right reasons. Jon Thurston, their vice skip, who throws third, produced the shot of the tournament in their 9-2 win over Norway on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n He made a double takeout, hitting one Norwegian rock into another to remove both, while avoiding the five red Canada stones in the house (scoring zone). The game at that point was extremely tight. Canada were 3-2 up after five ends, until Thurston\u2019s shot set up a match-winning six-point end \u2014 the most points anyone has scored in one end at these Games.<\/p>\n \u201c(The gap) was only this wide,\u201d Forrest said in the mixed zone, holding her hands out just wider than a curling stone to show the gap \u2014 between two Norwegian guard rocks \u2014 Thurston fired his takeout through.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to have the weight to get through a tight hole, and you need the right line. It was a great shot, a great line call. Everything came together.\u201d<\/p>\n They won the game \u2014 9-2 after Norway forfeited the final two ends \u2014 and won attention. More than a million people have seen the clip of the shot on the Olympics-themed Instagram account of the CBC, Canada\u2019s public broadcast company. Other clips, including from the official Paralympics account, have hundreds of thousands of views.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard that,\u201d Thurston said in the mixed zone of his viral shot after beating the U.S. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing. More eyes on our sport is a good thing. I was super happy with that (shot).\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Are takeouts his favourite? \u201cNo, honestly not,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cBecause if you have to make them, you\u2019re usually not in a good position. But they are nice.\u201d<\/p>\n Thurston is phenomenal at them, successful with 78 per cent of his 45 takeout attempts in the round robin. His prowess was prevalent in the first end against the U.S., finding the gap again between guards. He hit one red stone into another, clearing both and preventing the Americans from taking control of the house.<\/p>\n In the seventh end \u2014 with the team up 6-3 after stealing two points in the sixth end \u2014 Forrest delivered two perfect takeouts of her own. She bounced away yellow stones by hitting them head-on, meaning her Canadian red rocks stopped dead in.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n It put them in the enviable position of having three stones in a scoring position early in an end for which the U.S. had the hammer (final shot). Canada took a point from it, the 19th time these Games they have stolen an end \u2014 the most of any team.<\/p>\n