Team GB win two golds on same day as Winter Olympics history made | Other | Sport
Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker have won the inaugural Winter Olympics skeleton mixed team event by 0.17 seconds, with a track record time of 1:59.36. Weston is now a double-Olympic champion after winning the men’s skeleton on Friday night, while Stoecker now takes home a gold medal from her debut Games.
Their success crowned a Super Sunday for Team GB after Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the snowboard cross mixed team final, Britain’s first gold on the snow, rather than ice. Team GB had never won multiple gold medals at any previous Winter Olympics, let alone two on the same day.
Speaking to the BBC before their medal ceremony, Stoecker said: ” Thanks [Matt]. I can’t believe it. No, like it’s a team effort, right? When Matt came down and we were in the green… I think I’m in shock!”
Weston added: “Luckily, I felt like I kind of knew what I needed to do. Yesterday – not yesterday, the day before, it’s all a bit of a whirlwind – when I had the individual event, I kind of took a load of confidence from that, and I just had to almost in my head be boring and get the job done. We’ve done it again!”
Stoecker left Weston with 0.30 seconds to make up on Germany’s Axel Jungk and Susanne Kehrer, which he wiped out by 0.17 seconds. The other German pair of Christopher Grotheer and Jacqueline Pfeifer took the bronze after being just 0.01 seconds behind their teammates.
Stoecker and Weston were paired together as the top individual performers, with the former coming fifth in the women’s event. Freya Tarbit and Marcus Wyatt, who came seventh and ninth in their individual competitions, also competed in the mixed event, being bumped down to fourth and missing out on a medal because of Stoecker and Weston’s run.
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The former Team GB bobsleigh pilot John Jackson was full of praise for Weston on the BBC’s coverage. “That was absolutely immaculate! He [Weston] has been the cream of the crop of anybody on this track.
“This is history. This is the first time GB have won three gold medals at a winter games.
“He [Weston] just keeps raising the bar to new standards, and that was absolutely nail-biting stuff when Tabby didn’t quite give the run she wanted to give him a chance. Matt Weston absolutely destroyed the field, and a lot of that was done in the first 50 meters. He is the first Brit to win two gold medals [at the Winter Olympics]. What an amazing achievement.”
Team GB are now up to 12th in the medal table with the same amount of golds as Australia and Japan. They are ahead of 13 other countries in medal count: Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czechia, Finland, Latvia, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia and South Korea.
