Paralympic gold medallist Jo Butterfield and her new partner Jason Kean showed their competitive resilience and composure as they scored three at the final end of their third place play-off to claim a podium finish at The British Curling Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship in the National Curling Academy.
A steal of two by their Korean opponents at the seventh end had put the Anglo-Scottish pairing under pressure heading into the decisive end, but Kean had put two stones on the button before Butterfield, who won her gold medal in athletics in Rio in 2016 and only switched sports to wheelchair curling three years ago, produced a perfectly weighted draw to join them and clinch the 10-9 victory.
“This bronze shows a lot of potential,” said Butterfield. 
“It was a strong field out there and it was hard but we have just started this journey and it is exciting to see where this could go.
“It is the first time we have done mixed doubles together and it was nervy at times but we reassured each other and as the game went on we came into it.
“When I played that last shot we were decisive about what it was and that paid off.”
It was a performance which demonstrated British Curling’s strength in depth in a year that had already seen Scotland’s Hugh Nibloe and Charlotte McKenna claim silver at the World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles, where England’s Stewart Pimblett and Karen Aspey missed out on the play-offs by the narrowest of margins.
With several of the leading pairs in the global game having been drawn to this event the coaches had taken the opportunity to mix up their pairings asking Nibloe to team up with Aspey and Pimblett with McKenna, while Butterfield and Kean got their chance.
“It’s been absolutely brilliant throughout the whole tournament playing with Jo,” said Kean.
“We have bounced off each other really well and to be honest I couldn’t have picked a better partner for the weekend.
“It’s been a really positive experience and going forward we are going to be switching up partners again, but I’d definitely love to have Jo as my partner again.”
Butterfield echoed that emotion, saying: “We are both very happy and really positive people so I think that really help us through especially when we have had some tough games.
“When we lost to China in the semi-final this morning – which was a hard game – we never let our heads go down and we committed to our shots and we played our best the whole time.”
As a battle-hardened performer who has won at the highest level, Butterfield felt the environment had provided an excellent early opportunity for the British Curling squad to test themselves as they build towards the Winter Paralympics in Milan-Cortina next year.
“It’s always noisy when China are playing and they were in the gold medal game on the ice next to us, so it was always good as it felt like you could hear people cheering every shot and the pressure felt intense I am not going to lie,” she said.
“These are the people that we will be facing in Milan – so whoever gets selected for the team or the mixed doubles – to get an idea of where we are at this point in the season is gold dust and we know what we need to do to be not settling for bronze, but to be shooting for that gold.
“There is a big opportunity in the mixed doubles, it is a new event at the Paralympics and it is a wide open field so it is an exciting prospect.”
British Curling’s Paralympic Head Coach Sheila Swan meanwhile felt that the competition had served its purpose well for the home team players.
“We are delighted to have had the chance to host teams from China, Korea, Latvia, Poland and USA, as it has made for a really good international field,” she said. 
“Mixed Doubles is still a very new discipline in wheelchair curling and there are not a huge number of events to play in around the world so it is really important that British Curling is hosting these events.
“From a results point of view I am probably a little bit disappointed to see where some of our GB pairings ended up, but I think Jo and Jason did a great job to secure that third spot.”
A total of seven players will be selected for the Winter Paralympics, with five involved in the team event and none of those allowed to participate in mixed doubles, so Swan acknowledged that there is still a lot of work to do to put the best combinations together.
“We have an opportunity to pair up English and Scottish athletes in the squad this year which is really exciting for both the team and mixed doubles selection in December for Milan Cortina,” she said.
”We have a couple more events where we will be mixing up the teams and trialling out different combinations.
“Good results undoubtedly help to drive momentum and bring some positivity about the programme, but right now it is about seeing our best combinations and looking at what our data is telling us from a team and opposition point of view as there isn’t a huge amount of data in this discipline.
“We did really well at the World Championships last season to medal, but there were 12 different medallists in this cycle, so there is still a bit of learning in terms of what makes an excellent mixed doubles team in wheelchair curling.”
GB TEAMS
GBR 1
Charlotte McKenna and Stewart Pimblett
GBR 2
Karen Aspey and Hugh Nibloe
GBR 3
Jo Butterfield and Jason Kean
GBR 4
Meggan Dawson-Farrell and Julian Mattison
