London likely to bid for curling’s Canadian Olympic Trials after successful Grand Slam

After a successful Grand Slam in London, the local curling community hopes to host the Canadian Olympic Trials. CTV’s Brent Lale reports.

After a successful Grand Slam event, London’s curling community has bigger dreams in the next few years.

“We’re going to take a breather because we’ve got 200 tired volunteers,” said Peter Inch, host chair of the recent AMJ Masters.

“We got the Canadian Club Curling Championship in St. Thomas in November of 2026, so that’s exciting. The Olympic trials, I think that will be our next bid that we’ll try to get.”

That will be ahead of the 2030 Winter Olympic Games. Those trials traditionally would be in late 2029, but Inch says Curling Canada is potentially making changes to the qualifying schedule, so it’s currently unclear when that event would take place.

London curler Sarah Wilkes, the lead for Team Homan, believes London would be a great host for an Olympic Trials.

There is also a good chance she could be competing as her team is ranked number one in the world. They took home a record-extending 18th major title winning the AMJ Masters 6-4 over Team Silvana Tirinzoni.

“London is such a good sport city,” said Wilkes.

“They’ve hosted so many like national and international events before, so I think any sort of event like that, the host committee would do an incredible job.”

The Grand Slam of Curling kicked off its season at Western Fair Sports Centre last week. London has a long history of hosting high-end curling events, and this one was equally as successful.

“We wanted $200,000 in ticket sales and we got $230,000,” said Inch.

“With the Ryder Cup and the Blue Jays and everything going on, we’re pretty happy with that number.”

Wilkes could feel the love from her family, friends and hometown supporters.

“The fans were incredible,” said Wilkes.

“They were so loud in the final in the semi on Saturday night. The atmosphere was electric for sure.”

For the first time in the history of the Grand Slam, they included Wheelchair Curling on the final day. Fittingly, it was a Londoner who took home the title.

“It was incredibly monumental for wheelchair curling to be part of the Grand Slam,” said Mark Ideson, who won as skip of Team Canada Red.

“To have Great Britain and Italy there was it was really cool. To actually win it in my hometown was pretty special.”

When Ideson refers to the moment as “monumental,” he believes it’s the most exposure Wheelchair Curling has received since the last Paralympic Games.

‘It’s huge because we only get really exposure every four years during the Paralympic year,” said Ideson, a three-time Paralympic medallist.

He’s set to skip Canada in the 2026 Paralympic Games in Italy.

“To play in front of big crowds on arena ice is really good preparation, especially leading into Cortina. It was really neat to have my friends and family there, especially after the Olympics or Paralympics in Beijing when we couldn’t have friends and family there.”

Inch says he’s also had discussions about bringing a future Wheelchair Curling event to London.

While the local organizing team is ready to take a break, that won’t be the case for Ideson or Wilkes.

Ideson is travelling to Switzerland, Scotland and the Czech Republic over the next few weeks for Paralympic preparation.

Immediately after winning Sunday, Wilkes and her team hopped on an 8 p.m. flight to Calgary for the Points Bet Invitational which begins Wednesday. It could be a preview of the upcoming Olympic Trials.

“All Canadian teams here in Calgary and it runs from Wednesday to Sunday,” said Wilkes.

“We’re out here practicing a little bit and then we’ll get into the competition in the next couple of days.”