INA FORREST DISCUSSES THE LATVIA GAME, VIRTUAL REALITY, AND SHUEY-ROHN-ROHN

Having been to a few of these Games, it’s natural to compare. Some things are always the same – the credentials, the security, the ceremonies. Other things bring the flavour of the local people or the location, or the culture.

It’s nice that at least some of this is familiar for us. That’s the nice part of always being the test event. We had seen the venue, but we hadn’t seen the village at all. The village has been a wonderful surprise compared to the accommodation we had for the Worlds. There’s lots of room for everybody, it’s close to the venue, easy to get around. The dining hall is nearby, the laundry is right there. It’s like a house with everything you need.

We had quite a bit of downtime, so we wandered around the whole village a few times. There’s a virtual reality “shoot ‘em up” game that we played with the staff, and all the players. We had a lot of laughs at that. There’s a little plaza too, so we’ve done a bit of shopping. The hot item is the stuffed mascot – so I spent a bit of time in line waiting to get one of those. I eventually managed to get a Shuey-Rhon-Rhon.

We kept ourselves busy with a few things, but it was starting to get a bit long. So it was a relief when we were able to get on the ice for our practices, and once the competition started. Now, we’re right into it.

I think because of the three weeks of training right before we came, we got really comfortable playing with each other, and had a really good idea of how everybody was playing. Coming in, we definitely had confidence, and we’re feeling pretty comfortable with how we’re playing. Getting two wins off the bat was fantastic.

In our game against Latvia today, there was a really odd incident. At the end of the first end, we were pretty sure we had two points, but we were coming down the ice, and we knew there was going to be a measure. But because we all knew, nobody was paying attention to the rock in question. As the volunteer came over to move it, we all realized a second too late, and yelled “No!” but she didn’t hear it, and the rock got moved.

So we asked the umpire, and we had the option of taking one point, or replaying the whole end. We talked about it as a team, and because we’d been set up for 2 or 3 at least, we thought that we’d give it another shot, and see if we couldn’t get more than one… on our second attempt at the first end.

The second attempt didn’t start out very well. About halfway through, I was looking around and wondering if we’d made the right choice. They were sitting two, and we were chasing the whole time, trying to get rid of guards. But we made a couple, and they missed a couple, and suddenly we had a shot for four. So yeah, it turned out to be a good choice. 

After that, we were able to settle down and finish the win, but all of us agreed that’d we’d never seen that before!

Starting with China, it was “jump in, and get playing” and then we had another game last night. It’s nice to have the second day with just the one game, so we have a little more time to relax and recover. It’s a long week, and we still have seven games left in the round robin… while it’s nice to be playing, it’s also nice to have a little break early on, and some time to rest.

Ina Forrest is a four-time Paralympian in Wheelchair Curling. She has two gold medals from 2010 and 2014, and a bronze from 2018.