US and British curlers overcome tree accident and tumor, join record number of women at Paralympics

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — One is an American mom trying to win her first Paralympic medal. The other is a British woman hoping to become the first athlete from her nation to win a gold medal at both the Summer and Winter Paralympics.

American Laura Dwyer went back to sports to help her mental healing after a 1,000-pound branch from a sugar maple tree fell on her while she was doing landscape work.

Brit Jo Butterfield began competing after going into sports as part of her rehab after surgery to remove a spinal cord tumor in her back had a shocking outcome — and later continued competing while recovering from a breast cancer diagnosis.

The 48-year-old Dwyer and 46-year-old Butterfield faced each other in the mixed doubles wheelchair curling event in Cortina d'Ampezzo on Friday. They are part of a record-setting female participation at the Winter Paralympics. There are 160 female competitors at Milan Cortina, 24 more than the previous record in Beijing 2022.

“This is the greatest opportunity in the world, to show others what it looks like to work hard towards a goal,” Dwyer told The Associated Press. “The Paralympics is the best of the best. And to come here means you did it. It means you worked hard, you didn’t let something stop you. You found this purpose or this goal and worked at it.”

Dwyer's 'changed world'

Dwyer, who is from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, was an athlete in her teenage years and in college, playing volleyball and softball, and continued playing casually later on.

The accident that “changed her world” happened in 2012, when she was 34 and a mom of two young children — ages 4 and 6.

“It was a very beautiful, sunny day and I was just weeding underneath a giant 80-foot sugar maple," she said. "And it was, at that time, on that day, that a giant branch, from 40 feet up, decided to break completely from the tree, fall down, hit the power lines, and hit me in the back, knocking me to the ground, breaking my ribs, and my back, severing my spinal cord, leaving me paralyzed.”

Dwyer said she eventually found a way to have her independence back and "do all the mom things, and the wife things, and the work things,” but it was taking longer for her to go back into sports. And she missed it.

"That physical exertion wasn’t happening, and I was frustrated, pent up, like stuck,” she said.

After starting counseling, she eventually joined a gym and started working out, and that “physical exertion helped my mental state.”

Wheelchair curling clinic

It was at the gym — about seven years after her accident — that Dwyer saw a flyer for a wheelchair curling clinic, which she joined. A coach eventually noticed her and that led to Dwyer joining a camp where she got to practice alongside national team players, including her current partner Steve Emt.

“Before I even knew her story, just the way she carried herself and the vibe she put out, I knew this was gonna be a good fit for the program,” Emt said. “So we just threw everything at her, and real quick, and she took it in. Everything about her, being a mother, being a wife, being a survivor of a terrible accident. It’s all part of the big package that she presents and we’re happy that she’s around.”

Emt and Dwyer, who is participating in her first Paralympics, lost to Butterfield and her partner, Jason Kean, when the American and British mixed-doubles teams met in the round robin of the competition at Milan Cortina.

Butterfield's resiliency

Butterfield was paralyzed in 2011 after surgery to remove a spinal cord tumor.

“I went into an operation to remove that tumor, and there was a 0.01% chance that you could be paralyzed. And I was the statistic,” she said. “I guess somebody has to be.”

She said she decided not to “dwell and be miserable” and instead accepted it and tried to “make the best out of life.”

Butterfield said sport for her was rehabilitation at first, and she tried several different things until "athletics found me in 2014.” It turned out she was a talented club thrower, and it wasn't long before her career took off and she was winning a gold medal at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.

She seemed to have found her niche, but suddenly club throw was taken out of the Paralympic program for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, leaving her without a sport.

Butterfield said she wasn't ready to give up, and eventually accepted an invitation to try wheelchair curling. She quickly rose through the program and within six months was winning a medal at the worlds.

Cancer diagnosis

Then Butterfield had a breast cancer diagnosis at the beginning of the training cycle for Milan Cortina.

"I said, ‘Was there not an unwritten rule that somebody in a wheelchair couldn’t get cancer?'" Butterfield told the AP. "But apparently not."

She said there "were hard days but thankfully the treatment went well."

“And all of a sudden I had teammates who could, you know, cheer me up,” she said. “I shaved my head and half the guys in the curling squad are bald. So I was one of the baldies."

Butterfield said curling became her escape.

“I remember the early days of treatments, chemotherapy was every week," she said. "When I was on the ice training, it was the only time I didn’t think about it. It was my happy place. It was when I was just ‘Jo the athlete’ competing, training, not thinking about dying or cancer or treatments.”

Now declared cancer-free, Butterfield remains with a chance to become the first British athlete to win a gold medal in both the Summer and Winter Paralympics. And she already has her sights on the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, when club throw will make its return.

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AP Winter Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games