As the clock ticks down to the start of the Winter Olympics there’s one group of people more excited than any other. And it’s not the athletes competing, although they still eat, sleep and breathe winter sports: former Olympians who have swapped the slopes, or the track, for the commentary booth.
“Secretly, I’ve always enjoyed watching it more than doing it,” Lamin Deen tells The Independent. A former bobsleigh pilot who competed in the 2014 and 2018 Games, Deen is part of the punditry and commentary team on TNT Sports, who are broadcasting the Winter Olympics for the first time.
The 44-year-old says his job as a pundit is to “help the viewer understand the ins and outs” of the sport. “When people watch bobsleigh all they see is four guys or ladies running down an icy chute, getting in and watching it whizz down, hoping for crashes! But just to give them an insight into actually what goes on – what’s going through the driver’s head, what are they doing?
“You’ve been through that process, and now you’re on the outside looking in. I know what they’re going through, the stresses, the nerves, the apprehension, the joy, and although I’m not there, I’m with them in spirit, you know?”
For 2010 Olympic champion Amy Williams, who will commentate on all of the sliding events at Milan-Cortina, getting an audience to understand the psychological aspect is what’s most interesting. “You know the emotions they’re feeling, you know what hard work they’ve put in, and it comes down to that one moment,” the former skeleton racer says.
It’s something Williams is acutely aware of, with the threat of a complete funding cut hanging over her participation at the Vancouver Olympics. “We had to bring home a medal to keep the sport alive,” she explains. “Luckily I did, the funding was there, and that ultimately gave us Lizzy Yarnold, Laura Deas, the guys that went on to bring home loads more medals. They wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t medalled in Vancouver.
“So the pressure for the athletes, you want to do as well as possible for you, but you want to do well for the team, for your country, for the future generations of your sport. Obviously you stand on the start line and that’s not in your brain, but underneath it there’s a lot of different layers that the general public wouldn’t maybe realise.”
Ed Drake, an ex-Alpine skier and ski cross racer who also competed in Vancouver, will be in the studio as well as commentating on the Alpine skiing and moguls. He retired in 2016, having started commentating while sidelined from competition with injuries. “When I stopped racing, it was my way of falling back in love with the sport,” he says. “I was hugely passionate about racing, and now I’m hugely passionate about broadcasting.
“You can tell people how good it is until you’re blue in the face, but they need to watch it. Whatever sport it is, having people that are really good at explaining what’s happening, especially in the Winter Games where people don’t have that knowledge, is crucial.”
It’s not as simple as just stepping into the commentary booth, however. “It actually scares me because I feel like I do need to swot up a little bit!” says Williams. “I don’t pretend to be an expert on any other winter sport. You might not have the intensive knowledge of it, but you can apply those same principles [from your sport] that someone watching on TV just doesn’t know. People, for example, don’t realise the different types of ice you can have on the track, and the equipment choices you will make for that kind of ice, the time of day, how that can change.”
While there will be a studio team based in Cortina d’Ampezzo, the commentary will come from the studios at Warner Bros. Discovery’s home in Chiswick. Inevitably it’s a budget-conscious move, but the impact on the environment – particularly given concern over how the climate crisis will shape the future of winter sports – is also a consideration, Drake says.
“In an ideal world on site you’re able to absorb the atmosphere better,” he says. But having endured pop-up commentary booths in portakabins, libraries, and village halls, having a permanent space is also a blessing. “I think in some ways the quality of what you get is better, but for us we have to work a bit harder! You rely a little bit more on the goodwill of racers and coaches that you know, to be able to give you that extra information.”
Deen adds: “If anything, you can see it more clearly [from on TV]. Especially in four-man bobsleigh there’s so much that can go wrong – you’ve got razor-sharp spikes on, people slicing each other, there’s crashes. You can really see and take your time in this sort of environment.”
The most recent Winter Games, Beijing 2022, was something of a disappointment for Team GB, who left with only two medals. The atmosphere around Milan-Cortina is markedly more positive. “I think it’ll probably be the greatest medal haul of all time,” Deen says. “Everyone is just upping their game.”
Britain’s bobsleigh athletes are among the top contenders for gold in Cortina. “We’ve always had the talent,” Deen explains, “but not so long ago suffered with lagging a bit in equipment. It’s an equipment race, it’s F1 on ice. You’re working with a tenth of a second between first and fifth, so even a thousandth makes a difference. We’ve caught up on that, and the athletes are phenomenal.”
Team GB are among the favourites in skeleton, too. The squad sealed the mixed team World Cup title ahead of the event making its debut at the Games, while reigning world champion Matt Weston won a third overall World Cup title and teammate Marcus Wyatt picked up individual bronze.
Williams says: “I feel confident we’ll get at least one if not two medals, outside chance of even three. Sometimes being the dark horse and the outsider, actually the underdog comes through.”
Unsurprisingly, all three pinpoint their sport as the one audiences should be bookmarking to watch at the Games. “We’ve brought home medals in every Olympics [that skeleton has featured in] apart from four years ago in Beijing,” Williams says, “so in that sense the most successful winter sport is skeleton. I’ll leave you with that!”
For Drake the ones to watch out for are slalom skiers Dave Ryding – who is competing in his last Games, and who was Drake’s teammate in Vancouver in 2010 – and Billy Major and Laurie Taylor. “It’s a better chance than any time we’ve ever had before to get a medal, and not just from one bloke, so I can’t wait to see that.”
Deen says: “I’m biased, but you’ve got to be watching Brad Hall and the team in the four-man bobsleigh. The trajectory over the last two or three years has just been like that,” he gestures steeply upwards. “This is the guy that’s beat the top nation on their home track [with European gold in Altenberg, Germany], he’s boxing with the top three Germans week in, week out.”
For all three there’s nothing like the Winter Games.
Watching the Olympic flag be raised, and hearing the Olympic oath, will be a special moment for Williams. “You wait every four years for that,” she says, “that magic of what the Olympics is all about is what it boils down to, the humanness of people all around the world coming together to compete against each other. It’s just magical.”
Watch every event of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics live on TNT Sports and from 6-22 February
