Cool Britannia: Skeleton Stars Target History Olympic despite the lack of ice | Bob

Notice to a wall inside the small wooden hut that houses the only skeleton of Great Britain and the trail of Bobsleigh push-star is a warning that provides health and safety commands without any mention of irony.

Alongside the instructions to ensure that the leaves and other dangers are eliminated before use is the clause that the track must be free of ice. That Great Britain is the only flow nation in the world that permanently navigates a lack of frozen structures betrays the involuntary satire of the directive.

It is here, on the outskirts of the main campus of the University of Bath, flanked on one side by fields and on the other a modern range of modern pentathlon shooting, which Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt made a mockery in the climatic handicap of Great Britain.

This month, Weston, 28, has maintained the Skeleton World Cup title in view of the 33 -year -old Wyatt at the silver medicine point. A few weeks, the couple then replied that one-two at the World Championships, Weston resuming the title he had given up the previous year (when the second ended) to become the first world champion of Great Britain. His winning margin of 1.9 seconds was the second largest in the history of the event.

Just over 10 months from Milan Cortina 2026 Winter OlympicsThey recorded their names as favorites of gold and silver medicine. Surprisingly, they did it from the temperate climates of the south-west of England.

“For the success we have, compared to the nations that have traces of ice, it is a kick to the teeth for them,” says Weston. “Probably annoys them a little more. We don’t have an ice rink and we are still beating them.”

The weather conditions mean that the Great Britain skeleton program works in a rather different way from its rival frosts to frost. While Weston and Wyatt pose for the photos, an orange dug takes the road up and down the push-star track of 140 meters, collecting mud from an adjacent moat to replace an old gravel path that swept away in recent winter storms. “It would take about two hours to remove the digger”, his operator informs Guardian’s photographer, darting hopes for a clear background for the images.

During autumn and winter, the entire British flow configuration moves to colder regions all over the world; During spring and summer, they refined their profession here, taking advantage of their dependence on the push-start track to become the best in the pushing sled sector. The enigma then try to drive it on a frozen track while laying before and approaches at 90 miles per hour for the other half of the year when they head abroad.

Climate constraints inform everything they do. While other nations use their tracks of ice to teach the identification system of British talents from a young age – which brought Weston from Taekwondo and Wyatt of American Football – transforms strong physical athletes into expert pushes, before facing the sliding element later.

Does this not mean that a heavy portion of young recruits usually proves to be poor cursors when they eventually reach ice? “All the time,” says Weston. “But for those who can do it, our advantage is that we are arousing other countries, so we are already ahead from the beginning. When we do it well, as I did in Lake Placid (when we won its second world title at the beginning of this month), we are almost untouchable.”

The absence of frozen resources at home also forces British athletes to compensate for the lost time of ice by collaborating, creating a unique commercialism in contrast with the cut nature of other skeletal configurations.

“From the first day of the program, you are told that we are working in the team,” says Wyatt. “Every year, we only get about 150 ice races. Each race is less than a minute, so you’re watching two hours to actually make sport every year. After each race, we will talk about it. So, even if we only have 150 races, it is as if we had 300 points because I use Matt as much as mine uses.”

Weston adds: “It is enormously different from other nations. It is very unusual that athletes work in close contact and shock the other nations how much we share and do together. It is not a secret that I want to beat Marcus and he wants to beat me, but if we can help us to be a sunny and then have that small internal battle is ideal.”

Recent results suggest that the approach works, just like when GB produced three women’s Olympic Olympic gold medals from 2010 to 2018 for kind concession by Amy Williams and Double Champion Lizzy Yarnold. However, Weston and Wyatt could only end 15th and 16 ° respectively in Beijing 2022, marking the first absence of the British skeleton podium since the sport had been reintroduced 20 years earlier. The problem, admits the couple, was technology.

“For the year of Beijing, we pulled out new equipment, new sleds and made a bet,” says Wyatt. “The program had designed something we thought would be the beat of the world and did not go to plan. What we had done in every other Olympics had been quite special but you ended up falling back. We just made a mistake.”

Some of the British contingents considered retirement in the wake of that disappointment of Beijing. Instead, an wholesale review led to the recruitment of Great Martins Dukurs in Latvon recently retired as a performance coach, together with his expert Matthias Guggenberger sled manufacturer. “It was a great bet to let them enter because it went against what we had previously done as a sled all the morning,” says Wyatt.

That both Weston and Wyatt instantly won a medal with the sled redesigned at the first event of the World Cup, the following season has highlighted how important technology in sport is; Like a driver in car races that can do so much with a slow car. The British couple has rarely been absent from the podium since then, bringing the new challenge of high expectations.

“Beijing was extremely frustrating while the equipment has disappointed us,” says Weston. “The fact that we were able to turn it so quickly on a brand new equipment actually shows that we could have gone there and perform. The kit did not work.

“Even if the problems are not like approaching medals, it is more like how to face the pressure. It is not an expectation that we could win a medal, it is if we do not win a medal that we have failed. That, for me, it was the biggest thing I need to work. But it is a positive thing to face.”

Supported by historical data, Weston and Wyatt insist that, apart from Beijing, the British contingent usually excels the Olympics. Curiously, they indicate the lack of an ice rink in Great Britain as a reason why.

“At the Olympics you don’t have much time on the track,” explains Weston. “Get only a certain amount of racing. We are extremely good in this because we do not have a domestic track, so every trace we are going, we must be able to learn quite quickly and perform immediately. We have to do it; we have no choice.”

Despite their conflicting-Weston characters, showing off a new smooth line shaved in her hair, it is an extroverted, while Wyatt is naturally more silent and more considered-close friends choose to spend their free time together in addition to the semester who live in the other’s pocket. “I probably shared a bed with him more in the last six months than he has with my girlfriend or him with his wife,” Irza Weston jokes. “It’s quite intense.”

Surprisingly, there is a topic on which they differ: if they would have changed what they have in the bathroom for the ice all year round. “Yes,” says Weston. “It would allow us to do many more tests and low pressure scrolling. I would like to have that opportunity a little more.”

Wyatt does not agree: “I would not change what we have now, in the same way that I would not change what happened to the last Olympics. Without that result we would not be here. So I’m happy with what we have.”

No ice; Music for the ears of a health and safety officer.