Disappointing end to Winter Paralympics for Wigan's Karen Aspey
Great Britain slumped to their worst-ever mixed team wheelchair curling performance at a Winter Paralympics as they closed their tournament with defeat to Norway.
Karen Aspey – who hails from Wigan – and her team lost 9-2 in their final match at Milano Cortina 2026, in a performance that summed up their overall efforts in the Games.
The team featured four debutants, including Aspey, who had been recruited as part of a rejuvenated pathway, but recorded just one win in nine games on the ice.
“It’s a mixture of emotions,” reflected team skip Hugh Nibloe. “It’s not the way I wanted to finish. It’s really gutting.
“The support we’ve had from everybody back home and everybody here, to not be able to give them the results, it’s a learning curve. We’ll be back in training in a month’s time and start righting the wrongs.”
Since wheelchair curling was introduced to the Winter Paralympics 20 years ago at Turin 2006, GB’s worst performance had previously been in their second outing at Vancouver 2010.
At that Games they won three out of their nine round robin matches, but Team Nibloe surpassed that in Italy with just one win to finish bottom of the rankings.
They had arrived at the Games expecting to make history as the first mixed team to feature English curlers on the ice with Aspey and Stewart Pimblett both representing the country south of the border for the first time.
But it was an experiment that failed to produce dividends this time out, despite Nibloe believing the set-up still has strong foundations.
“We’ve got a lot of good culture, and we’ve got a lot of good building blocks in place,” he said. “We’ve got a great pathway manager, Cheryl, who is bringing lots of players through and trying it.
“I’ve love to see them just build on it because the potential is there. I see it every day in training and I know that if people reach the levels, we’re not a million miles away.
“We’re a few miles away but we’re not a million miles away and I think we can be a force again.”
Against Norway, Great Britain had taken a 2-0 lead from the first end to audible celebrations, but once more could not make it stick.
The malaise that had plagued them throughout the tournament returned for the rest of the half, as they fell to three successive 1-0 ends to trail 3-2 at half time.
And, despite having lost three matches to one-point margins throughout the tournament, the fight was up against Norway as they slipped to consecutive 3-0 losses in the fifth and sixth ends to call the match prematurely at 9-2 down.
It was a disappointing end to a disappointing campaign at Milano Cortina 2026.
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