Snow hope: Britain looks to mount medal comeback after 2022 flop

LONDON — Britain's skiers and snowboarders came away empty-handed from Beijing 2022, but medal hopes are rising again as the Milano-Cortina Olympics draw near.

Despite "brutal" funding cuts post-Beijing, and ongoing logistical hurdles resulting from Brexit, GB Snowsport CEO Vicky Gosling says her athletes will have all to play for in Italy in February.

"We have got talent that has delivered over the last three years, very transparently delivered at world championship level and competed on a world-class stage and outshone many nations," she told reporters.

"The strength and depth of the team is stronger than it's ever been."

Britain has won only three Olympic medals on snow, starting with Jenny Jones' bronze in snowboard slopestyle at the 2014 Sochi Games.

The tally doubled at Pyeongchang in 2018, with freestyle skier Izzy Atkin taking slopestyle bronze, while Billy Morgan won bronze in snowboarding big air.

After those Games, GB Snowsport's then-performance director Dan Hunt set a four-medal target for 2022 and talked of seven to nine in 2026.

He also spoke of Britain becoming a top-five snow sports nation by 2030.

"We went to Beijing with an ambition to probably rewrite the history books, but the reality was something different," said Gosling, a former Royal Air Force officer, with understatement.

The only British medals in Beijing were on ice, for curling.

COVID-19 was a big issue for skiers without easy access to snow or training facilities and needing to travel, and led to a significant loss of funding. A further three million pounds ($3.93 million) were cut post-Beijing.

Private sponsorship has filled some of the gap for a national governing body that now has a four-year budget of 7.2 million pounds spread across its Olympic disciplines, but there are no medal targets this time.

"I think we've been burnt too badly in the past," said Gosling.

An appetite to win

Nonetheless, the initial signs are promising.

In the first men's Alpine skiing World Cup slalom of the season in Levi, Finland, this month, two Britons finished in the top seven with Laurie Taylor posting a career-best fourth and past winner Dave Ryding finishing seventh.

Snowboarder Mia Brookes won slopestyle gold at the 2023 world championships at the age of 16, and the overall World Cup Snowboard Park and Pipe crystal globe last March. Mateo Jeannesson was crowned Moguls junior world champion in 2024.

Kirsty Muir came back from injury to win a slopestyle World Cup in Tignes last March, after taking bronze in Big Air and Slopestyle at the 2023 Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado.

Charlotte Bankes, the 2021 snowboard cross world champion, won silver at this year's world championships.

"We've gone from this mindset of being grateful for being on the podium, being grateful for being at the start line, to being at the start line with the appetite to win — and expecting to potentially win," Gosling said.

"Despite the punches, when you look at what we've achieved in the last few years, it's insane, really.

"People are expecting us to be the underdog, but we're not, actually.

"We're the underdog in the fact that we don't have the mountain ranges, and we don't have the money, but we still seem to be competing with the best in the world."

Unlike its rivals, British athletes and coaches have post-Brexit limits on time spent in the European Union — 90 days in every 180.

Training outside the EU, in North America and the southern hemisphere, adds to the expense.

"The challenge that we have with our athletes and coaches, and I'm going through this at the moment, is we run up (days) because we need the facilities in Europe to train, and of course, to compete," said Gosling.

"It's a constant logistical challenge. It's just another distraction, another hurdle that we have to go up against."

Reuters