By Devin Heroux
There is a finite amount of spotlight and coverage high-performance athletes receive throughout their sporting careers.
Unlike pro sports and athletes — big salaries, celebrity endorsements and unlimited coverage — amateur athletes have to scrap and claw for every opportunity to be noticed.
Every four years, there is a small window for Olympians and Paralympians to cash in on sponsorship and fan excitement. Outside of that, the shine of their sport dims, leaving athletes in the background as they try to make ends meet.
The Olympics are covered in a comprehensive and robust way — and able-bodied athletes enjoy year-round coverage of their competitions. While the Para sport movement continues to evolve and coverage is improving, there is still so much room for growth.
That’s why the Grand Slam of Curling’s inclusion of wheelchair curling for the first time ever is so pivotal.
The Wheelchair Curling Invitational is set for Sept. 24-28 and includes four teams: Canada Red, Canada White, Great Britain and Italy.
The round-robin play portion of the event will be taking place at the KW Granite Club in Waterloo, Ont. The bronze and gold medal games will be played at the Western Fair Sports Centre in London, Ont., alongside the Grand Slam of Curling’s AMJ Masters finals.
The medal games will also be streaming online for fans to follow along.
"To get that opportunity at the Grand Slam and to have fans cheering us on and for us to be on arena ice is going to be super special," Jon Thurston said during a recent episode of the Broom Brothers podcast.
"It'll be great to play some international teams. Thank you to the Grand Slam of Curling and The Curling Group for including us.”
Thurston has been Team Canada’s last-rock thrower for the last number of international competitions, including helping the team win Paralympic bronze three years ago in Beijing.
Canada has a powerhouse wheelchair curling program — in fact, Canada is the only nation in the world to have won a medal at every Paralympics since wheelchair curling was introduced to the programme in 2006.
Thurston says the attention the team received during the Beijing Paralympics was incredible, and he’d like to see the movement continue to grow.
“With the Paralympics, it's the best coverage we get in the quadrennial. More people can watch us, more people can get engaged. And when I came back from the Paralympics in 2022, the nicest thing that I heard was just people's experiences. We were in Beijing, so there was a 12-hour time difference, and people were just doing the marathon of staying up, watching our games,” Thurston said.
“They maybe hadn't seen wheelchair curling before, but whether it's members of our curling club or people that knew us, or just friends of friends, they stayed up and they got hooked.”
Thurston says the GSOC Wheelchair Curling Invitational is the perfect way to ramp up their preparations for the Paralympics in March.
“We get to see arena ice if we're lucky once a year, that's the world championships, so to be able to get the value of being on arena ice in September leading into the Paralympic year, it's super exciting," he said.
With two Canadian teams in action, there is room for a large group of red and white wheelchair curlers to get valuable playing time throughout the Invitational.
Chrissy Molnar, who got her start with Thurston more than a decade ago, will also be on the ice in Waterloo and London and is brimming with pride at getting the chance to represent Canada once again.
“I think it's just being able to wear the Maple Leaf again for like the second time playing,” Molnar said.
She’s been an alternate for Canada at the last two world championships.
“I'm really looking forward to playing in front of a crowd, and we have one teammate that will be playing in the Maple Leaf for the first time with the crowd, so I'm looking forward to that for her too,” Molnar said.
While the Canadians will want to put on a show for the hometown crowd and win the first-ever Wheelchair Curling Invitational, they all understand there is a bigger play to all of this as well.
The visibility of this event during a Grand Slam of Curling event cannot be underestimated.
“It'll be special to be able to play in that arena at a Grand Slam. And to be able to share the sport with other fans that maybe haven't seen wheelchair curling. It's pretty cool,” Thurston said.
“If we could get someone to watch it that intrigues them to maybe try it, that's a pretty cool aspect too.”
