Mark Ideson (born April 10, 1976, in

Parry Sound, Ontario Parry Sound is a town in Ontario, Canada, located on the eastern shore of the sound after which it is named. Parry Sound is located south of Sudbury and north of Toronto. It is a single tier government located in the territorial District o ...

) is a Canadian wheelchair curler who competed in the

2014 Winter Paralympic Games The 2014 Winter Paralympics (russian: Зимние Паралимпийские игры 2014, Zimniye Paralimpiyskiye igry 2014), the 11th Paralympic Winter Games, and also more generally known as the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, were an ...

in Sochi and won gold. He is married and has two children. He now resides in

London, Ontario London (pronounced ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximate ...

. In 2007, the helicopter he was piloting crashed into a field near

Cambridge, Ontario Cambridge is a city in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, located at the confluence of the Grand and Speed rivers. The city had a population of 138,479 as of the 2021 census. Along with Kitchener and Waterloo, Cambridg ...

and he now lives with quadriplegia. He played

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

before he was disabled.

Personal

Ideson is married and has two children, a 17-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, and a 13-year-old son, Myles. He went to the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thames R ...

. He studied environmental Science there, where he met his future wife, Lara. He was also a former

Mustang The mustang is a free-roaming horse of the Western United States, descended from horses brought to the Americas by the Spanish. Mustangs are often referred to as wild horses, but because they are descended from once- domesticated animals, the ...

s Cheerleader. After graduating university, he became a helicopter pilot and was introduced to wheelchair curling in 2010 at the age of 33.

Accident

In 2007, during a maintenance flight, his helicopter crashed into a field near

. He broke 29 bones during the process. 500 metres away, Daniel Hermann, an eight-year-old boy saw this and went to his mother to call 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived shortly after within 20 minutes. Ideson said "I had rehearsed for seven years what I was going to say to a kid that essentially saved my life. I could never really put it to words."

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ideson, Mark 1976 births Living people Sportspeople from Parry Sound, Ontario Canadian male curlers Canadian wheelchair curlers Paralympic wheelchair curlers for Canada Paralympic medalists in wheelchair curling Paralympic gold medalists for Canada Paralympic bronze medalists for Canada Wheelchair curlers at the 2014 Winter Paralympics Wheelchair curlers at the 2018 Winter Paralympics Wheelchair curlers at the 2022 Winter Paralympics Medalists at the 2014 Winter Paralympics Medalists at the 2018 Winter Paralympics Medalists at the 2022 Winter Paralympics World wheelchair curling champions