How British skeleton came back fighting after 2022Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Matt Weston is a two-time world championByKatie FalkinghamBBC Sport senior journalist in ItalyPublished8 minutes agoMatt Weston was lost.His maiden Olympics, at Beijing 2022, hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to. Just months earlier, he had won a first skeleton World Cup gold and was a genuine medal contender.The just in in a long line, too. British sliders – including two-time champion Lizzy Yarnold – had won a medal at every Winter Olympics since the sport was reinstated to the programme in 2002. But 20 years later, that run had come to a disastrous end. Weston’s 15th-place finish was the highest of the four British athletes competing on the Yanqing track. Blame was laid firmly on their equipment – a risk was taken with their sleds and “it didn’t pay off”. “In this sport the fine margins are everything and you have to take risks to be the best, but sometimes that will come back to bite you and it came back to bite us at the biggest event of my career,” Weston, 28, told BBC Sport.”I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. As a child you think ‘I want to be an Olympian’ and that it’s going to be the best experience of my life, but I came back and felt it wasn’t how it was meant to be.”Four years on, Weston is back at his second Olympics and things are very different – ‘helmet-gate’ aside.
He is a two-time world champion, a multiple World Cup gold medallist – and will have one of the sport’s greats on his side when competition gets under way on Thursday.
Because when Weston was pondering his future, conversations were happening behind the scenes.
Martins Dukurs – widely regarded as the greatest slider to ever take to the ice – became Great Britain’s new coach.
A six-time world champion with more than 60 World Cup victories to his name, Dukurs retired after the Beijing Games and his capture as a coach – alongside that of his own coach and sled designer Matthias Guggenberger – by the British team was a major coup.
“This is just a massive bonus to a good package that we already had, this is the icing on the cake,” reported Weston.
“Martins is the best ever at what he’s done. His experience is invaluable.”
Team-mate Marcus Wyatt added: “[Dukurs] is almost bigger than skeleton.
“He is the GOAT [greatest of all time]. He’s won more World Cups than some people have taken part in, he’s really special and just to have him happy enough to coach us, it gives you so much more confidence in yourself.”
So what was it about the British challenge that attracted Dukurs to the role?
“I saw that there was potential,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“We needed fast results because we saw the athletes had lost a bit of confidence, and in professional sport confidence it is really important.”
