The Winter Olympics have historically somewhat passed Team GB by. Perhaps understandably for a nation with no Alpine climate and hardly a winter to speak of, Britain has never enjoyed the same outsize presence in the Winter Games as it has in the Summer equivalent.
But that appears to be changing. Britain brought home a record five medals in Sochi and Pyeongchang, and after a blip in Beijing, when GB scraped two, UK Sport has set an ambitious target of four to eight at Milano-Cortina. Rather than waiting until the final weekend for silverware in the curling, as in Beijing, the hope is that the gold rush will start rather sooner – and in a wide range of sports, from skeleton to snow sport and ice dance.
Eve Muirhead knows all about the trials and tribulations, and the joy, of a Winter Olympics, having endured crushing losses before winning gold in Beijing.
Since retiring the 35-year-old has taken on a role as GB’s Chef de Mission for this Games, and her pragmatic, cautious demeanour can’t hide genuine optimism and belief that it could be a turning point for Britain in winter sports.
“We know we have the capability to disrupt the norm at the Winter Games,” she told The Independent and other media on the eve of Milano-Cortina. “And we all know we’re an emerging winter nation, aren’t we? We’ve definitely shown that, especially last winter season and how this winter season is going as well.”
Asked whether this could be the greatest British team of all time to go to a Winter Olympics, Muirhead said: “Potentially, absolutely. I think we are taking a very potent group of athletes.”
British hopes include Matt Weston, the reigning skeleton world champion, and his teammate Marcus Wyatt; between them the pair have won every round of the World Cup circuit this season. In snowsport, three young athletes are blazing a trail: 23-year-old Zoe Atkin, 21-year-old Kirsty Muir, and 19-year-old Mia Brookes all won medals at the prestigious X Games last month, while Atkin is the reigning world champion in freestyle half-pipe.
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson are the top-ranked ice dance pair in the world and could end a 30-year wait for a British medal in the discipline. Charlotte Bankes, who is making her fourth Olympic appearance, is another major contender in snowboard cross, while Bruce Mouat has two opportunities to win a medal in curling, with the Scot and partner Jennifer Dodds impressing in mixed doubles so far. And Britain’s men’s bobsleigh team, piloted by Brad Hall, is another to watch.
“What an opportunity for the whole nation to get behind winter sport,” Muirhead continued. “We’ve seen [last] summer firsthand how incredibly we’ve done with women in sport, and we’ve got the opportunity again to continue that in the Winters.
“Having the medal target that we do, between four to eight, I think it just shows the incredible group of athletes we have, the potential that we have.”
Muirhead is calling on her own experience as an athlete in her new role. She said: “I think having the athlete’s head on in terms of having that experience and understanding what it takes for an athlete to perform at the games, my number one rule is to create that perfect platform for the athletes to go out there and perform.”
It is a huge team effort: “As an athlete from curling, it’s all about teamwork, it’s all about delivering under pressure and trusting each other as well, and I know I’ve got an incredible team around me. I wouldn’t have performed [in Beijing 2022] if I didn’t have my great support team around me and the incredible HQ team out there, so that was important to us.
“I’m going to be travelling around and I really want to make sure and see every single athlete, see every single sport if I can. Of course it’s going to be a lot of travelling, but I really want to make it feel special for the athletes, that they can feel that they have as much support as possible.”
With great potential to perform comes great pressure and Muirhead is conscious of Team GB’s role in managing expectations, particularly among young athletes like Brookes. “The Olympics, it can and it does change people’s lives, but I was very adamant that I didn’t want it to change me at all as a person. One thing that we do very well is work with the athletes and the sports to release that pressure on them. For the likes of Mia, it’s the case of going into this event as another event on the World Cup circuit, which it is.”
Team GB will also be utilising AI tools, such as the app Theseus, to filter out and deal with threats and cyberbullying on social media, including by notifying police and other authorities depending on the severity of the threat. Protections are in place around the athletes so they can focus entirely on themselves and their competition.
Muirhead is conscious of “the jeopardy of winter sports”. “That’s something that I can bring to the games as well, just knowing what the athletes have been through to get to this stage. In curling, we’re quite lucky that we’ve got two weeks of competition. A lot of these athletes have 20, 30 seconds of competition, a lot of them I know are fighting back from injury. A wrong edge, that could be over. It comes down to millimetres, milliseconds, but let’s hope we’re on the right side of it.
“It’s a great way to get the nation behind the Winter Olympics, because what does the Winter Olympics not have that everybody loves to watch? 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.”
