Rocky road to Paralympics for curler
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2010 (6011 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
VANCOUVER — Gerry Peckham is
one of those unheralded, behind-thescenes
guys.
He won’t have some dignitary putting
a gold medal at the end of a ribbon
around his neck if Canadian skip Jim
Armstrong does the expected in Paralympic
curling.
He may not be on the podium with
Armstrong and his team of Darryl
Neighbour, Ina Forrest, Sonja Gaudet
and fifth player Bruno Yizek, but he
won’t be far
away with a
block-wide
grin pasted on
his face. For
Peckham, who
hooked up with
Armstrong
to win backto-
back B.C.
men’s ablebodied
titles
in 1973 with
Jack Tucker
skipping and
in ’74 with
Armstrong on
the teeline, is
as responsible
as anyone for
getting Armstrong
out of
his easy chair and into wheelchair curling.
It’s as if the 59-year-old former dentist
was reborn.
Because the constant pain in his
ruined knees refused to allow him to
get down in the hack and his wrecked
shoulders wouldn’t let him sweep, a
depressed Armstrong was certain his
days of competitive curling were over
in 2002. For someone as competitive
Armstrong, who’d curled for more than
40 years and won six Purple Hearts as
B.C. men’s champion, the future was
gloomy indeed.
Nearly seven years after limping
out of the Richmond Curling Club, he
wheeled back in with a brand new outlook
in 2007. Meantime, his wife and
mother of his three children Carleen,
was in the middle of a losing battle with
cancer.
Peckham, the high-performance
director for the Canadian Curling Association,
of course, knew of his former
skips retirement from able-bodied
curling. He called and wanted to know
just how crocked Armstrong was. Two
crocked knees and a like number of
useless shoulders — too much sweeping
with corn brooms of old contributing to
the damage — suggested to Peckham a
fresh start for his old friend.
Still, Armstrong had to travel to Scotland
to prove to the World Curling Association’s
doctor there he was crippled
enough. “The good news is they allowed
me to play,” said Armstrong, in his particular
brand of humour, “the bad news
is I’m that screwed up physically.”
— Canwest News Service
