Team GB FINALLY win first medal at Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics as Matt Weston claims skeleton gold after days of heartbreak and near misses
Matt Weston won skeleton gold at the Winter Olympics to end Team GB’s long wait for a medal in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Weston converted his overnight lead into glory at the Cortina Sliding Centre to become the first man to secure an Olympic skeleton crown and first male athlete to win gold at the Games since Robin Cousins in 1980.
The 28-year-old double world champion arrived at these Games as the strong favourite and delivered emphatically with an overall time of 3:43.33 to clinch Team GB’s first medal of the event in Italy.
‘[It means] everything,’ Weston, supported by his fiancée Alex Howard-Jones and his family in Cortina, told BBC Sport. ‘It means a hell of a lot to me personally, I have worked so hard for this.
‘Everyone back at home, my fiancee, my family, my friends, everyone that has sacrificed for me to be here. I have missed funerals, birthdays, everything for this moment and it feels amazing.
‘Even if you’re not part of my close circle, if you play the National Lottery you’re supporting me as well so thank you so much. Hopefully I did you proud.’
Matt Weston secured skeleton gold to win Team GB’s first medal of the Milan-Cortina Olympics
Weston was supported in Cortina by his family, including fiancée Alex Howard-Jones
The 28-year-old appeared emotional as he celebrated a dominant victory on Friday night
Weston blew the rest of the field out of the water, winning gold by a huge margin of 0.88sec
Weston came into the second day of the men’s event with a healthy 0.30 lead over the rest of the field, after clocking 56.21 on run one before improving to 55.88 in his second.
He extended his advantage to 0.39 following his third run of 55.63 and ended 0.88 ahead of Axel Jungk of Germany, who took silver, while Jungk’s compatriot and Beijing 2022 champion Christopher Grotheer claimed bronze.
Weston’s triumph comes after days of agonising heartbreak for Team GB, who were backed with £25million worth of funding for this Olympic cycle.
Freestyle skier Kirsty Muir, snowboarder Mia Brookes, and curlers Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds had all finished fourth in their respective events, before ice dancers Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson also blew a chance to win a medal.
But Weston had no such problems as he became just the 13th British athlete to ever win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. Team-mate Marcus Wyatt finished ninth.
The build-up to the event for Weston and Wyatt had been dominated by a row over the British team’s helmets, which were ruled illegal.
The British pair instead reverted to the helmets they used to dominate the 2025-26 World Cup season – Weston won five of seven races and Wyatt the other two.
The skeleton competition itself was overshadowed by the controversial disqualification of Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was sensationally thrown out of the event for trying to wear a helmet depicting athletes killed in the war with Russia.
Heraskevych appealed the decision but the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Friday rejected his claim.
Weston dropped to the track at the Cortina Sliding Centre after his superb victory
Weston is engaged to Howard-Jones, chief operating officer and founding member of pltfrm search, a specialised executive search firm based in London.
The pair are set to get married in July and both share a ten-year-old cocker spaniel named Logan.
Weston started his sporting career in a completely different field. Born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, he used to take part in competitive taekwondo.
He won gold and silver medals at the European Cup in 2012 and silver and bronze medals at the International Taekwondo Federation World Cup in 2014.
However, he retired from the sport at just 17 years old due to a fracture in his back.
Instead, he focused his attention on rugby representing Kent, Sevenoaks RFC and a Saracens Academy College.
He was eventually introduced to skeleton in 2017 by his weightlifting coach Chris Dear through the British Skeleton Discover Your Gold talent identification scheme.
To prepare for the sport he completed a training period with the Royal Marines to test his physical and mental fitness.
He made his competitive debut in 2019 at the Europa Cup in Winterberg, Germany, placing 15th, before winning a silver medal in Igls, Austria, and a bronze in Altenberg, Germany.
In 2021, he won a gold for Great Britain at the men’s World Cup – the first win in the sport for almost 14 years.
After competing at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and with a new coach, he won the European title in 2023 and a week later became world champion, before retaining his title in 2025.
