Team GB has made history by winning two Winter Olympic titles on one day for the first time, with Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoecker clinching mixed team skeleton gold in Cortina.
According to BBC Sport, this achievement comes after Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the snowboard cross mixed team event earlier on Sunday. Weston produced a stunning race to make more of his own history, becoming the first Briton to win two gold medals at a Winter Olympics.
Weston's run of 58.59secs secured a second medal with a final time of 1:59:36. A second British team, Marcus Wyatt and Freya Tarbit, missed out on a medal by 0.01secs, with the two German teams taking silver and bronze.
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As reported by the BBC, the mixed event, making its debut at Milan-Cortina, sees the sliders hurtle down the track one after the other with a quick reaction time crucial. Weston came into this Games stating that only gold would be good enough and he will now walk away as the most decorated man in British Winter Olympics history.
Investigation and Reaction
Former bobsledder John Jackson, Olympic bronze medallist in 2014, said: "Weston has been the cream of the crop of anybody on this track. We are witnessing history right here." Weston told BBC Sport, "Luckily I felt like I knew what I needed to do. It's all a bit of a whirlwind, I took confidence from the individual event and in my head I had to be quite boring and just get the job done."
Official Statements and Future Implications
Wyatt said: "Me and Matt were there in Beijing [2022] and it was good to come and prove that that was a blip and not a trend." The British team have a long history of Olympic skeleton success, and these medals will go a long way to improving the landscape for the future of this programme.
