Great Britain had their greatest day at a Winter Olympics, after Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker won gold in the mixed team skeleton in a combined time of 1min 59.35sec. It was the British team’s second gold medal in the space of just a few hours, following the victory by Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale in the mixed team snowboard cross earlier in the afternoon.
Weston has now become the first British athlete to win two medals at the same Winter Olympic Games, and only the second Team GB athlete, after Lizzy Yarnold, to win two winter gold medals in a career.
The gold came thanks to Weston’s remarkable final run of 58.59sec. After starting well, Stoecker had made a couple of mistakes in the back half of her own race, which left Weston needing to make up a full three-tenths of a second to overtake the German pair of Axel Jungk and Susanne Kreher and move into first place. It is a huge margin in a sport that is often settled by hundredths of seconds. But he delivered a faultess performance.
There was one bittersweet note to his victory. By moving into first place, Weston and Stoecker knocked the second British pair, their great friends Freya Tarbit and Marcus Wyatt, down into fourth.
The mixed team event is new for the Olympics. The fastest men and women from each country are paired together, and race the track back-to-back for a combined time. The key difference from the regular event is that it uses a reaction start in which the clock starts running as soon as the start lights randomly switch off. There is a time penalty for a false start, which happened to both the Italian and Austrian teams.