Great Britain’s most successful Winter Olympics in history reached new heights on Sunday as skeleton racers Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker clinched gold in the mixed team event.
The result meant that day nine of Milano-Cortina was Team GB’s most successful ever at a Winter Games, with two gold medals won in the space of around five hours, and three in 48, having never previously won more than one gold in a single Games.
29-year-old Weston has made history twice at these Games, winning Britain’s first men’s skeleton Olympic gold on Friday before becoming the first Briton to win two medals at the same Winter Olympics today.
“Pretty special to be a part of that, to be honest,” Weston said. “I’m extremely proud of what I’ve been able to achieve in the past couple of days, especially to win the first ever team event. It’s absolutely amazing, and to win it with such a great teammate is just the icing on the cake. I’m a bit more in control of my emotions this time! I’m just absolutely over the moon.”
Weston’s two golds put him among Britain’s most successful Winter Olympians, but he said: “I think to even consider putting my name next to those is a massive honour. I don’t want to be the one to say what position I am in there, but to have my name next to those is absolutely amazing. A lot of those guys have been a massive inspiration, especially within the sliding sports. The success that they’ve had has only opened the door for us to come here today and excel.”
Stoecker is an Olympic champion on her first appearance, improving on her fifth-place finish in the women’s event.
“What an honour, it’s incredible,” said Stoecker, still in disbelief. “The medal’s really heavy, it’s gold, I get to share it with Matt – it’s more than I could have ever hoped for.
“To be honest, I can’t even remember my run now. It’s just been such a whirlwind of emotions. I was trying to make some improvements on yesterday. I’m just really proud of myself to come away from my first games, a decent result yesterday and then a gold in the team event.”
Weston and Stoecker were the last team to set off in the inaugural mixed competition on a freezing night at the Cortina Sliding Centre. Stoecker was in the green for the first half of the track but lost time further down, leaving Weston with a 0.3 second deficit to overhaul.
And claw it back he did, finishing in 58.59 as the pair set a new track record time of 1:59.36, 0.17 seconds ahead of the German pair of Susanne Kreher and Axel Jungk, who added team silver to both their individual silvers.
On watching Weston bring home the gold, Stoecker said: “I’ve got a lot of trust in him. He’s the individual Olympic champ before this, and his standard of sliding is insane. So I had a lot of faith that he was going to lay down another exceptional run, but also it’s always nerve-wracking when you have to watch the clock and the splits and you’re not sure like how it’s going to go, but the the flow that he has on the sled, it’s just unmatched, so from about halfway down I could feel that it was gold.”
Weston had no knowledge of how much time he had to make up. He said: “When I’m at the top of the track, I kind of put my helmet just low enough that I can’t see what the splits are. All I was doing was listening to my coach telling me the timings, and all I could think of was don’t false start. So I was just staying very calm, and trying to be as collected and as boring as possible, just tick the boxes, get the job done.”
Weston is famously a perfectionist, and asked whether this was finally a perfect run, he said: “I think corner nine, I wasn’t exactly smooth coming out…”
That didn’t matter, however, and the pair can now celebrate a hugely successful end to their Olympic campaigns with “a few pints and pizza,” Weston said, as well as with their families and friends, who all turned out to cheer them on despite -8 degree weather in Cortina.
Stoecker said: “I got to put my little my gold medal on my niece and nephew and they were saying how heavy it was, and that’s a moment that is going to last forever for me and hopefully for them too, so that was just incredible.”
After a slow start to this year’s Games GB enjoyed a ‘Super Sunday’ with Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale winning the country’s first ever gold medal on snow earlier in the mixed snowboard cross.
There was very nearly a third medal too as Britain’s second pair, Marcus Wyatt and Freya Tarbit, finished fourth in Cortina. Tarbit slid superby to shave 0.3 seconds off the previous leading time, set by China, with Wyatt maintaining their lead to shoot to the top of the standings.
The pair set a then-track record time of 1:59.65 and watched on nervously as Kreher and Jungk set off.
Kreher finished a mere 0.12 seconds down on Tarbit and Wyatt crossed his fingers in the leader’s area as Jungk pushed off. The German clawed back precious milliseconds over the second half of the track, where he has been particularly strong this year, to push the British pair down the order by 0.12 seconds and guarantee a medal.
Germany’s Jacqueline Pfeifer and Christopher Grotheer – who both took bronze in their individual events – claimed another bronze, finishing 0.01 seconds down on their compatriots.
The mixed skeleton event sees the female athlete race down the track with the male athlete following immediately afterwards and their times added together, with the lowest aggregate time determining the winning team. Unlike in individual events, which are made up of four heats, every team only gets one run, with a Formula 1-style reaction start and time penalties imposed for false starts.
