After a week of team competition at the Stirling Wheelchair Curling International in The Peak, some of the best wheelchair curlers in the world are moving to the other side of the building to the National Curling Academy to contest The British Curling Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship.
It is an event that provides a rare opportunity to test themselves in the discipline that will be introduced to the Paralympics for the first time in Milan-Cortina next year and it is providing British Curling’s coaches with an opportunity to examine their strength in depth. 
Hugh Nibloe and Charlotte McKenna, who won a silver medal for Scotland at the World Championships which were held on home ice at Auchenharvie earlier in the year, consequently find themselves playing with new partners in the pair who represented England in those Championships, Nibloe lining up with Karen Aspey and McKenna with Stewart Pimblett, while Jo Butterfield plays alongside Jason Kean and Julian Mattison with Meggan Dawson-Farrell.
“We’ve done some practice in training, we’ve focused on it this week and we’ve not been total strangers to mixed doubles over the last few months, but competitively it’s going to be really good to get back into it, especially going in as the World silver medallists,” said Nibloe.
“It’s all building up to March and it’s great that we’ve got choices to make, so the coaches will want to see everybody playing with everybody else and see how the combinations work and things like that.
“They know that if they were to stick with Charlotte and me that we are already quite a strong partnership, but I guess they are looking to see if they can get stronger partnerships and they’re really looking for us to drive one another on.
“Hopefully my experience can bring Karen on and Charlotte’s experience can bring Stewart on, so hopefully we can get the most out of each other and out of the programme and give the selectors a bit of a nightmare.”
He recognises that the calibre of opposition represents a huge opportunity to pick up crucial information ahead of the Winter Paralympics. 
“I’m looking forward to playing China in mixed doubles because we didn’t get the chance to do that in Auchenharvie and we know that they’re going to be really strong, because China just seem to be able to produce players right, left and centre, so they’re always strong whatever events they go in,” Nibloe observed.
“They will be a team to beat, along with a couple of others that are previous World Champions in Latvia and Sweden.
“I think the USA’s team for the Paralympics is already selected and they’re going to be here too, so it’s going to be really tough.
“They’ll be looking at us, though and seeing that we can chop and change and we’ve got lots of strong players, so this gives us a good look at the other teams, to base things around tactically for Cortina which will be really useful.”
That mixed doubles competition looks like being one of the most open in the history of curling, as Nibloe noted.
“We’ve had 12 medals at the World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship during this Paralympic cycle and 12 different nations won them, so I’ve been joking about it saying you’ve got a 37 and half per cent chance of winning a medal and a 12 and a half per cent chance of winning gold because the standard is so close,” he said.
“There’s nobody that stands out and you think that they’re the team to beat. Every game you’ll have a chance of winning or losing, so it’s going to be exciting and if I’m involved I’ll be enjoying it and if I’m not I’ll be watching it knowing that whoever is there representing ParalympicsGB will have a great opportunity.”
On a personal level, meanwhile, Nibloe will not be able to repeat his performance at this year’s World Championships where he guided Scotland to the seventh place finish in the team event which was enough to secure Paralympic qualification, before claiming that mixed doubles silver medal, but he is simply desperate to be involved.
“We’re only allowed to play in one or other, because the Paralympics don’t allow you to play in both and we’ve seen that with Latvia this week in the Stirling International team event that the two strongest Latvian players haven’t played because they are focusing on the mixed doubles, so it will be interesting to see what we do,” he said. 
“It’s the start of December before the selections are made, though and at the end of the day we all just want to be on that plane as one of those seven, whether mixed doubles or the team event.
“I have absolutely no personal preference. If Sheila (Swan, British Curling’s Paralympic Head Coach) phones me up on the 10th of December and says you’re going with the team or you’re going with the mixed doubles, I will be equally delighted.
“I know that in both the team event and the mixed doubles we have medal opportunities because we have a strong squad.”
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Images: British Curling / PPA
