2 days ago
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Pinned to a wall inside the small wooden hut housing Britain’s only skeleton and bobsleigh push-start track is a notice delivering health and safety commands with no hint of irony.
Alongside instructions to ensure leaves and other hazards are cleared prior to use is the stipulation that the track must be free of ice. That Britain is the world’s only top sliding nation permanently navigating a lack of frozen facilities betrays the directive’s inadvertent satire.
It is here, on the outskirts of the University of Bath’s main campus, flanked on one side by fields and on the other a disused modern pentathlon shooting range, that Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt have made a mockery of Britain’s climatic handicap.
This month, Weston, 28, retained his skeleton World Cup title ahead of 33-year-old Wyatt in the silver-medal spot. A few weeks on, the pair then replicated that one-two at the world championships, Weston regaining the title he had relinquished the previous year (when finishing second) to become Britain’s first ever skeleton multiple world champion. His winning margin of 1.9sec was the second biggest in the event’s history.
Just over 10 months out from the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, they have etched their names as gold- and silver-medal favourites. Remarkably, they have done so from the temperate climes of England’s south-west.
“For the success we have, compared to the nations who do have ice tracks, it’s a kick in the teeth for them,” says Weston. “It probably annoys them a bit more. We don’t have an ice track and we’re still beating them.”
Meteorological conditions mean Britain’s skeleton programme operates rather differently to its frost-fortunate rivals. As Weston and Wyatt pose for photos, an orange digger works its way up and down the 140-metre push-start track, scooping mud from an adjacent ditch to replace an old gravel path that washed away in recent winter storms. “It would take about two hours to get the digger off,” its operator informs the Guardian photographer, dashing hopes of a clear backdrop for the images.
Through autumn and winter, the entire British sliding setup relocates to colder regions worldwide; during spring and summer, they hone their craft here, exploiting their reliance on the push-start track to become the best in the business at propelling sleds. The conundrum of then trying to steer it down a frozen track while lying head first and approaching speeds of 90mph is saved for the other half of the year when they head overseas.
Climatic constraints inform everything they do. While other nations use their ice tracks to teach sliding from a young age, Britain’s talent identification system – which took Weston from taekwondo and Wyatt from American football – turns strong physical athletes into expert pushers, before later tackling the sliding element.
Does that not mean a hefty portion of young recruits routinely turn out to be poor sliders when they do eventually reach ice? “All the time,” says Weston. “But for those who can do it, our advantage is that we’re out-pushing other countries so we’re already ahead from the start. When we get it right, like I did in Lake Placid [when winning his second world title earlier this month], we’re almost untouchable.”
The absence of frozen resources at home also forces British athletes to make up for lost ice time by collaborating, creating a unique camaraderie at odds with the cut- throat nature of other skeleton setups.
“From day one on the programme, you are told that we are working as a team,” says Wyatt. “Each year, we only get about 150 runs on ice. Each run is less than a minute, so you’re looking at two hours of actually doing the sport each year. After every run, we’ll talk to each other about it. So, although we only have 150 runs, it’s like we have 300 runs because I use Matt’s as much as he uses mine.”
Weston adds: “That’s massively different to other nations. It’s very unusual for athletes to work so closely together and it shocks other nations how much we share and do together. It’s no secret that I want to beat Marcus and he wants to beat me, but if we can help each other be one-two and then have that little internal battle it’s ideal.”
Recent results suggest the approach is working, just as it did when GB produced three successive female Olympic gold medals from 2010 to 2018 courtesy of Amy Williams and double champion Lizzy Yarnold. However, Weston and Wyatt could only finish 15th and 16th respectively at Beijing 2022, marking Britain’s first skeleton podium absence since the sport was reintroduced 20 years earlier. The issue, the pair admit, was technology.
“For the Beijing year, we brought out new equipment, new sleds and took a gamble,” says Wyatt. “The programme had designed something that we thought was going to be world-beating and it didn’t go to plan. What we’d done at every other Olympics had been pretty special but you end up falling back. We just got it wrong.”
Some of the British contingent considered retirement in the wake of that Beijing disappointment. Instead, a wholesale review resulted in the recruitment of recently retired Latvian great Martins Dukurs as performance coach, alongside his expert sled builder Matthias Guggenberger. “It was a big gamble to bring them in because it went against what we’d previously done as an all-British-built sled,” says Wyatt.
That both Weston and Wyatt instantly won a medal with the redesigned sled at the first World Cup event the following season highlighted just how important technology is in the sport; like a driver in motor racing who can only do so much with a slow car. The British pair have rarely been absent from the podium since, bringing the new challenge of lofty expectations.
“Beijing was extremely frustrating as the equipment let us down,” says Weston. “The fact we were able to turn it around so quickly on a brand new piece of equipment actually just goes to show that we could have gone there and performed. The kit didn’t work.
“Although, the problems now aren’t how to get close to the medals, it’s more about how to deal with pressure. It’s not an expectation that we could win a medal, it’s if we don’t win a medal we’ve failed. That, for me, has been the biggest thing I’ve needed to work on. But that’s a positive thing to have to deal with.”
Backed up by historical data, Weston and Wyatt insist that, Beijing aside, the British contingent usually excel at an Olympics. Intriguingly, they point to the lack of an ice track in Britain as the reason why.
“At an Olympics you don’t get much time on the track,” explains Weston. “You only get a certain amount of runs. We’re extremely good at that because we don’t have a home track so every track we go to we need to be able to learn pretty quick and perform straight away. We have to; we don’t have a choice.”
Despite their contrasting characters – Weston, sporting a slick new line shaved into his hair, is an extrovert, while Wyatt is naturally quieter and more considered – the close friends choose to spend their spare time together in addition to the half-year that they live in each other’s pocket. “I’ve probably shared a bed with him more over the past six months than I have with my fiancee or him with his wife,” jokes Weston. “It’s pretty intense.”
Surprisingly, there is one subject they differ on: whether they would switch what they have in Bath for ice all-year round. “Yes,” says Weston. “It would allow us to do a lot more testing and low-pressure sliding. I would love to have that opportunity a bit more.”
Wyatt disagrees: “I wouldn’t change what we have now, in the same way that I wouldn’t change what happened at the last Olympics. Without that result we wouldn’t be here. So I’m happy with what we’ve got.”
No ice; music to a health and safety officer’s ears.
