Winter Olympics

Wishing Good Luck to Team USA, whose marketers asked me to.

But you know that my heart lies with dear old Blighty! We are a nation who persist in trying to achieve the impossible with all the odds stacked against us.

Go Team GB!!

52 Athletes from 6 Sports and 11 Disciplines!

As BBC Sport say on their website:
Despite the obvious handicap of a lack of natural resources when it comes to winter sports facilities, Great Britain tends to win a medal or two every four years when the Winter Olympics come around.

As per usual, we have to go back a fair old way to our most successful Games – 1924 in fact, when we won four medals. The tally then was a gold in curling, silver in the four-man bob and two bronze – one in ice hockey and the other achieved by Ethel Muckeldt, 38, from Manchester, in the figure skating.

Since that memorable year in the last century, although we have achieved notable victories in the Ice Dancing with my heroes, Torvill and Dean, the Men’s Figure Skating with Robin Cousins and John Curry, and the Curling, as well as repeated showings in the two and four man bobsleigh, we have not managed to improve on that overall haul for one Games.

This year, our biggest hopes lie in the Skeleton, where Shelley Rudman was Britain’s sole medallist at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin when she unexpectedly took silver, following in the footsteps of Alex Coomber, who had won bronze in the previous Games.

Despite there not being a skeleton race track in this country, Britain has developed quite a talent for it over the last decade. This is mainly due to the sled technology developed by slider and former world champion Kristan Bromley, who has a PhD in the subject, and is also one to watch at the Games.

When they triumphed in the World Championships in Lake Placid last February, Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke became the first British bobsleighers to win a gold medal in the sport for 44 years. They will be hoping to improve on a poor recent record this year to take a place on the podium.

Scotland’s men are the current Curling world champions and the majority of this team will be entered as Great Britain. But the ladies, led by skip, Eve Muirhead should not be under-rated either.

Sinead and John Kerr, also from Scotland, have a chance in the figure skating, although bronze is the most likely colour.

Short-track speed skater Jon Eley finished fifth in the last Winter Olympics final in that event, and his goal for 2010 is “to push for medals at the Olympics”. His team mate Sarah Lindsay is also one to watch.

Zoe Gillings competes in snowboard-cross and is ranked fifth in the world. She and Benjamin Kilner are both medal hopefuls.

And, finally, Chemmie Alcott in the Alpine Skiing… although, heaven knows, how she gets to practise that in our country.