Winter Olympic stars-in-waiting ready to usher in new era of success for Team GB
When Jenny Jones swept to slopestyle bronze in Sochi in 2014 to clinch Great Britain’s first ever Olympic medal on snow, there were hints of the avalanche of opportunities the expanding snowboard and freestyle programmes would provide.
“We don’t even have mountains in our country, but this shows anyone can make it happen,” panted Jones’ team-mate Jamie Nicholls, as snow domes across the nation spilled with kids eager to test out the sports’ high-octane antics for themselves.
By mid-January, four British snowboard and freestyle athletes had won individual World Cup and X Games medals this season across five different disciplines. Replicated in the Italian Alps, that medal haul alone would match the country’s previous best total of five in both Sochi and Pyeongchang in 2018.
Girl power is fuelling the surge, led by Cheshire 19-year-old snowboarder Mia Brookes, whose multiple medal-winning exploits in both Big Air and slopestyle in recent seasons make her one of a number of strong contenders to become the first Briton to win two medals at the same Winter Games.
Zoe Atkin, whose sister Izzy became Britain’s first medallist on skis in 2018, leads the pack in the women’s freestyle halfpipe, while former world champion Charlotte Bankes has won both individual and team snowboard-cross gold this season, the latter alongside team-mate Huw Nightingale.
It marks an extraordinary evolution from previous eras of also-rans. Between Torvill and Dean’s 1984 Bolero and Rhona Martin’s curling ‘Stone of Destiny’ in 2002, real medal hopes were few and far between and we were content to feast on scraps like a short-track bronze for Nicky Gooch in 1994.
The Cortina sliding chute is another venue that could single-handedly yield a record-equalling tally. Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt have dominated the World Cup season, Tabby Stoecker and Amelia Coltman have both reached the women’s podium and Britain has also won two of four mixed team World Cups.
Bruce Mouat’s men’s curling team go to the Games on top of the World rankings and eager to go one better than their near-miss silver four years ago, while Mouat and Jennifer Dodds, part of Eve Muirhead’s gold medal-winning rink in Beijing, start as favourites in the mixed team event.
Jeopardy will, inevitably, intervene. Even the biggest Winter Olympic favourites are aware of Steven Bradbury picking his way through the wreckage of four fallers to win short-track gold in 2002, or US snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis crashing off her final jump four years later with gold at her mercy.
It is precisely what makes the Winter Olympics so irresistibly unique and the best-intentioned medal predictions so open to ridicule.
But almost 40 years after we shut our eyes and held our breath and just hoped our plucky British athletes would land on two feet and get out of the place alive, we have every reason to raise our expectations and fulfil Nicholls’ prediction.