Wheelchair curlers ready to fight another day

Whenever Bob McPherson needs a reminder of what’s at stake at PyeongChang 2018 he takes out his phone and sneaks a peak of the picture he keeps of his Sochi 2014 bronze medal.

That picture helps McPherson through the toughest days of competition and day four at the Gangneung Curling Centre was certainly one of those.

When Great Britain’s wheelchair curlers started their fourth day at the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games they were riding high.

Emphatic wins over Sweden and reigning champions Canada meant Aileen Neilson’s team of McPherson, Hugh Nibloe, and Gregor Ewan were sitting pretty in the round-robin standings.

But, as can often be the case in sport, things can change in the blink of an eye and defeats to Slovakia and the Neutral Paralympic Athletes (NPA) meant day four was one to forget for Team Neilson.

“I was tempted to bring the Sochi medal with me but it’s at home,” said McPherson. “I’ve got a photo of it on my phone so every now and then I have a wee peak at that to remind myself what it’s all about.

“But it’s about what goes on now, I’m confident we can still be up there come the end of the week.

“The target is a medal, we’ve known that and we’re confident that’s possible, we started the week really well and we’ve had a blip but I feel we can turn that around.

“It’s a blip, we showed how we could play in both games tomorrow and I’m confident we can be back.”

For Neilson and co things started to go awry in the third end of their afternoon clash with Slovakia with the Brits conceding three and fighting an uphill battle from that point on.

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