GB wheelchair curlers conclude calamitous Winter Paralympic campaign but hopeful for future

Great Britain’s wheelchair curlers concluded their calamitous Winter Paralympics campaign but vowed: ‘Our journey’s only just beginning.’

Hugh Nibloe and his Scottish rink endured a terrible time in Beijing as they slumped to six losses from their ten round robin matches.

Their hopes of advancing to a semi-final evaporated before Thursday’s final two clashes - where they recovered from a morning defeat against China to beat Latvia 8-4 - as they were unable to live up to the pre-Games promise of emulating ParalympicsGB’s brilliant bronze bagged at Sochi 2014.

Nibloe and veteran Gregor Ewan - part of the team in 2014 and at his third Games – were off the Paralympic pace while Games debutant David Melrose, 56, had to be rushed to hospital on a stretcher after falling out of his chair on the ice against Canada.

Meggan Dawson-Farrell, 29, did show some signs of sparkle and skip Nibloe, whose team only formed a matter of months ago, hopes her youthful enthusiasm can lay the foundations for a brighter future.

Asked if the Games can form the first step on the way to achieving something special, the 40-year-old from Stranraer said: “It could be.

“We’re a young and new team - a lot of the other teams have been together for years..

“If you want to be at the top you have to keep improving - hopefully we can continue to build unity and do well in the future.

“We’ve now got three more Paralympians after these games [Dawson-Farrell, Melrose and alternate Gary Smith] - that’s only going to add experience and we can now come back stronger in four years’ time.”

Britain just couldn’t find any consistency at the Ice Cube and were out-thought, out-manoeuvred and out-classed by their savvy opponents.

They repeatedly failed to land basic shots