Winter Olympics<\/a> \u2013 and a further two-to-five medals from the Paralympic Winter Games.<\/p>\n\u201cThat range is ambitious,\u201d Baker said. \u201cBut the dead centre of that range will represent the greatest Olympic performance we have ever seen at a Winter Games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baker\u2019s confidence does not look misplaced. Mia Brookes is the 2023 snowboard slopestyle world champion, while Zoe Atkin is the 2025 freeski halfpipe world champion. Kirsty Muir in the freeski slopestyle and big air, and Charlotte Bankes in the snowboard cross, also have legitimate medal chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have this incredible array of female athletes on snow who are pulling extraordinary things out of the bag,\u201d Baker said. \u201cSo whether it\u2019s in world cups, world championships or at X Games, the kind of performances that we\u2019re seeing from Mia Brookes, Kirsty Muir, Zoe Atkin, and Charlotte Bankes give us real optimism about what could happen at this Games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson won world bronze in March 2025, the first British figure skating medal on a global stage since Torvill and Dean in 1994. Photograph: Maddie Meyer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Elsewhere Matt Weston has regularly topped the rankings in the men\u2019s skeleton, while his teammate Marcus Wyatt sits third. While Baker described the men\u2019s curling team, led by Bruce Mouat as \u201crock stars\u201d who deserved their billing as gold medal favourites. Then there are Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who are aiming to win Britain\u2019s first figure skating Olympic medal since Torvill and Dean in 1984 after winning world championship bronze last year.<\/p>\n
And while Baker accepted that the winter Games had far more jeopardy than its summer counterpart, given the nature of many of the high-risk events, she insisted the team should be optimistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that on the day, anything can happen,\u201d she said. \u201cYou catch an edge and it all goes wrong. Something happens in a split second and it changes your destiny in the biggest stage of all. But we also recognise that we have extraordinary talent. And that gives us real confidence that, on our very best day, we could be reaching the top end of that medal range.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team GB\u2019s chef de mission, Eve Muirhead, agreed that the potential of the team was \u201cexceptionally high\u201d. \u201cWe\u2019ve been meticulous in our preparations for Milano-Cortina 2026,\u201d said Muirhead, who won curling gold in Beijing four years ago. \u201cI know first-hand the difference the right environment can make at an Olympic Games, and our focus has been on creating the conditions that allow athletes to deliver when it matters most.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are heading to Italy as a credible force across more disciplines than ever before, and I\u2019m excited to see the nation get behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team GB believes it can achieve \u201cthe greatest Olympic performance we have ever seen at a winter Games\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-367738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}