Team GB have never made anything more than the occasional ripple at the Winter Olympics. Which makes the prediction of Eve Muirhead, Britain’s chef de mission at the Milano Cortina Games, rather extraordinary.
“I believe that we are taking one of the most potent teams of athletes that we have taken to a Winter Olympic Games,” she says. “We have the capability to disrupt the norm.”
That norm, between 1952 and 2010, was just 12 medals in 16 Winter Games. Then came a surge, with five medals in Sochi in 2014 and five in Pyeongchang in 2018, before Britain won just two medals in Beijing. But Muirhead, who led the women’s curling team to Team GB’s only gold four years ago, senses that new ground will be broken by the 53 British athletes over the next 16 days.
“I see a set of athletes with a real pedigree in terms of recent results in the winter circuit,” she says. “And while we are a nation that already punches well above our weight, given the relative lack of snow and ice, I believe this team has the potential to really disrupt the natural order of big winter nations.”
UK Sport, which has invested £25.5m across winter sports for the 2022-26 cycle, has set a goal of four to eight medals. But it is clear that Muirhead wants to be right at the top end of that target.
“As a nation we are still an emerging challenger in many winter sports and part of our ambition at the Games is to show we are a credible team across all disciplines,” she adds. “And I firmly believe we will be.”
There is certainly significant evidence behind her optimism. In the weeks before the Games, GB Snowsports’ Mia Brookes, Kirsty Muir and Zoe Atkin all won X Games titles, while Charlotte Bankes won her first World Cup race since breaking her collar bone.
In the men’s skeleton, Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt have won all seven World Cup races this season and, according to the bookies, the men’s and mixed curling teams are also favourites to win a medal.
It helps that additional resources have also been pumped into technological innovations. At the University of Bath a flight simulator has been converted to simulate any skeleton track across the world, allowing the team to get hours of extra practice on the run they will encounter in Cortina.
Weston and Wyatt are also waiting to see whether they will be able to use their new aerodynamic helmets, which could give them an even bigger advantage. “We try to push the boundaries and find those gains, this is just one of the parts of innovation we do as GB and I think we do it pretty well,” says Weston.
Wyatt, meanwhile, is hopeful the helmet will be cleared. “We believe it is legal, it’s currently being debated. All of our success has been with our current helmet, so for me it is the tiniest little thing in the background.”
Meanwhile, in sports where speed is the major factor, special tech skinsuits have been introduced to reduce drag in competition, allowing athletes to go faster.
The great unknown, of course, is what other nations have planned. “We know that in some of those sports, particularly the sliding sports, the Germans run an R&I programme which is worth millions,” says UK Sport’s head of performance, Kate Baker. “They could pull something out on the day.
“I think if you spend any time hanging around any of our sports, not just the winter sports, you will see that they are all constantly looking at what everybody else is doing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s an arms race. It is definitely an expertise race, though.
“Where other nations have a sliding track, or a ski slope on their doorstep, they are able to do the kind of behind-closed-doors stuff that we can do more easily in cycling than we can in winter sports.”
But for all the emphasis on tech and talent, those competing know their chances could come down to a lucky break or how they handle the pressure.
“None of us really want to make the Olympics a big thing, but it is in reality and there’s no hiding that,” says Brookes, the 19-year-old who could end up winning two medals and being Britain’s biggest star at these Games.
“I’ve been scared that I’ll go to the Olympics, do the best I can, and it not be enough. You know the whole world’s going to be watching, and that definitely adds more pressure.”
Muirhead agrees. “A lot of these athletes have 20-30 seconds of competition. Then there’s the jeopardy of winter sports. A wrong edge, that could be it over. It comes down to millimetres, milliseconds. But let’s just kind of hope we’re on the right side of the inch.”
Team GB will hope to get off to a strong start on Monday with Muir and Brookes going for gold in the ski slopestyle and snowboard big air respectively, while the mixed curling team will aim to be competing in the semi-finals.
Whatever happens, Muirhead expects the nation to quickly renew its once-every-four-year fling with winter sports. “What does the Winter Olympics not have?” she asks. “You’ve got speed, flair and I guess a bit of chaos thrown in as well. And that’s what people love to watch on TV.”
