World Curling have confirmed that two stones were stolen from the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium before the preliminary rounds of the Winter Paralympics mixed doubles wheelchair competition began on Wednesday. Spare stones from the set were instead used, brought up to the same specifications as the remaining rocks.
A World Curling spokesperson told the Press Association: “Unfortunately, there has been a situation where two stones were stolen from the venue. The local authorities are currently investigating.” The stolen stones were previously used during the Olympic mixed doubles tournament, in which Team GB came fourth after Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds lost the bronze medal game to Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini of Italy.
Jason Kean and Joanna Butterfield are representing ParalympicsGB in the inaugural mixed doubles wheelchair competition and lost their first round-robin match 10-7 to Estonia, the world championship bronze medalists. Butterfield said afterwards: “It’s not the result we wanted and it’s not the performance we wanted.
“We didn’t play our best, and we probably got the result we deserved, to be honest. It’s a tough one because coming out into that arena was epic; we’ve never been in that kind of environment before; the crowd and the cheers were really good.
“We’ll go back tonight and have a chat and come back stronger. We’ll learn from it, and there’s a lot of curling left to do.”
Butterfield switched from club throw to wheelchair curling in the summer of 2022. That change came six years after winning a F51 club throw gold medal at the Paralympics, setting a world record distance. Kean also started curling in the same year, 12 months after recovering from a motorcycle accident and progressed through British Curling’s Paralympic Pathway programme.
The pair beat China to win gold at December’s International Mixed Doubles tournament in Latvia. Butterfield and Kean also won a warm-up tournament featuring Estonia and Italy earlier this year.
ParalympicsGB play twice on Thursday, facing South Korea from 9am before taking on Latvia just after 6pm. China lead the way after session one, after winning 10-3 against Japan, while Italy edged a close one 7-5 with South Korea, and the United States won 11-6 over Latvia.
Unbeaten teams Estonia and Italy also face off in session two, while China and the United States look to continue their positive starts against Latvia and Japan. The mixed doubles started four days before Saturday’s first official day of competition, much like at last month’s Olympics, but it is a first for the Paralympics. Verona Arena, which hosted the Olympics closing ceremony, will host the Winter Paralympics closing ceremony on Friday.