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Team GB chiefs have hailed Britain’s greatest day at a Winter Olympics after celebrating two gold medals, in the mixed snowboard cross and mixed team skeleton in Milano Cortina.
Super Sunday started with Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale storming to a surprise victory in Livigno, with Bankes dramatically overtaking the French team with four turns remaining to take mixed snowboard cross gold.
Less than five hours later, Tabitha Stoecker and Matt Weston added a second British gold in the mixed team skeleton in Cortina after Weston overturned a 0.30sec deficit following Stoecker’s run to beat Germany by 0.17sec.
That result also made Weston, who won gold in the individual event on Friday, the joint most decorated British Winter Olympian in history with Lizzy Yarnold. “I’m extremely proud of what I’ve been able to achieve in the past couple of days,” he said. “To win the first ever team event is absolutely amazing – and to win it with such a great teammate is the icing on the cake.”
Team GB’s chef de mission, Eve Muirhead, hailed the gold medals that put Britain into 12th in the table. “Getting two gold medals is just incredible,” she said. “The most we have ever had in British Olympic Winter history and for Matt, being the most decorated male winter Olympian of all time is something really special.”
Of the team’s overall performance, Muirhead said: “It was a slightly slow start, we knew that. But we were patient, we kept the vibe up. We kept very positive because we knew we were going to have opportunities to come.”
It was not quite a perfect day for Team GB, however. Mia Brookes was seen as the snowboard slopestyle favourite, having won the world title as a 16-year-old. But she fell on both her runs in qualifying, finishing 16th overall, and misses out on the final on Tuesday.
