3 March 2026

Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics: Team Great Britain

Wheelchair curling at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games starts this week and in the lead up, we will take a look at all the National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) competing. Next is Team Great Britain.

Team Great Britain will be represented by two wheelchair curling teams: Team Nibloe (mixed team) and Team Kean/Butterfield (mixed doubles).

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Great Britain is usually viewed as a facade in the sport of curling, that can easily be translated to “Scotland, but at the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

One of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, Scotland, has long been regarded as the representative for the wider nation at the Games, recently seeing Bruce Mouat’s men’s team win the silver medal at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

But this time around, the Paralympic team bucks the trend.

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Meet the teams

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Finding the balance

We still see the familiar figure of Hugh Nibloe skipping the mixed team, but he will be joined by a few accents the other side of the border to his hometown Stranraer.

Chief amongst these will be Stewart Pimblett, England’s skip who managed to bring his rink to the World Wheelchair Curling Championship in 2025, finishing a respectable eighth on their first appearance in 20 years. The Newcastle native brought a fire to the English team and enough banter to their northerly neighbours, leading to them being considered as part of the squad hoping to compete at the Paralympics this year.

Pimblett would be selected, alongside his old wheelchair basketball colleague Karen Aspey, and the man who encouraged him to come try the sport in the first place, Jason Kean. Kean is set to compete in the mixed doubles beside Jo Butterfield — an Anglo-Scot who is a Paralympic champion in club throw.

This creates a nice balance of three Scots, three English players and one who can be described as a bit of both.

Pimblett plays third in Team Nibloe, with Austin McKenzie set to make his debut as the rink’s second and Aspey as the lead. Graeme Stewart, a former wheelchair rugby player, is the team’s alternate.

Stories before the stones

This team is full of stories as to how they got into the sport. Nibloe, who loves a game of dominoes, was encouraged to try out the sport by a local coach, who thought it would be beneficial to him. Pimblett had watched the sport at the 2006 Paralympics and got the urge to revive the team, convincing a bunch of players including Aspey, who he had known for a long time.

He was also crucial to bringing Kean onboard, who had admitted to his mental health being at its lowest as he struggled to adapt to life in a wheelchair following a motorcycle accident which left him paralysed.

Even Butterfield moved towards the sport when her favoured event, the women’s F51 club throw, was removed from the athletics programme for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Soon after she made the switch, she was diagnosed with breast cancer — leaving her in a position where training and competing was not a straightforward process.

Building to the gold

But what have they achieved on the ice of late? Nibloe and then-doubles partner Charlotte McKenna made it all the way to the final of the 2025 World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Curling Championship, taking silver against Japan. That run would ensure Great Britain’s qualification for the Paralympics in this new event.

In the mixed team, the post-COVID era has been the trickiest to date for Scotland. While the nation made the podium four times in a row from the World Wheelchair Curling Championship’s inauguration — including back-to-back titles in 2004 and 2005 — there have been fights for survival in the 2020s. They have only made the top six on two out of five attempts, with the crowning moment being a bronze medal in 2023.

But what is important to remember is the inclusion of their English friends and rivals makes the past form one that you cannot truly base their future performance off of. Not only has the Scottish team changed a lot in the past few years, but new players competing together will throw variables that will be unknown to their opponents.

Great Britain have yet to have the Paralympic gold medal wrapped around their necks in curling, and what better story than players from across the island coming together to achieve that?

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Team GB Stats

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