British Skeleton athletes are heading into the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games season with ambitions and confidence high after a productive summer of training at the University of Bath.
The squad start their 2025-26 IBSF World Cup campaign on Friday 21st November at the redeveloped Eugenio Monti Olympic Sliding Centre in Cortina d’Ampezzo, which will also host the Olympic Games in February.
Securing a spot in the Team GB squad is the first goal for the athletes this season, with the Olympic qualification period closing in mid-January, but they are also looking to add to the impressive amount of silverware won during this Olympiad.
Matt Weston, who won World Championships gold in 2023 and 2025, said: “We’re not here to learn anymore, we’re out there to perform and show the world what we can do. We’ve shown glimpses of it already throughout the past three years but this year is the one where we’re going for it.
“I suppose there is that added pressure of coming into the season as a two-time World Champion but, at the same time, there is a lot of confidence that comes from having had consistent success. Having those amazing results also encourages the people around us to step up their game and that in turn pushes us to keep pushing away from them.
“Being at the University of Bath, which houses the only push track that we have in the country to train on, is a massive, massive part of the success. We are not just with each other during the season, the whole team is here and we know each other so well. It makes all these tough situations that you might go through a lot easier.”
Weston and Marcus Wyatt head into the season ranked men’s one and two in the world, while GB boasts three women in the world’s top 10 with Amelia Coltman, Tabby Stoecker and Freya Tarbit all having won World Cup gold this Olympiad.
Coltman said: “This is my biggest season to date. I’m coming off the back of a really successful season, so I’m heading in with lots of confidence and I’m feeling ambitious. We’ve been training really, really hard at the University since April, putting in the hard yards that nobody sees, and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for many, many years.”
Tarbit added: “This is the most excited I’ve ever felt to just get back on ice and start siding again. Training has been going really well and I just miss sliding, I miss the feeling of it and the excitement.
“I’m trying not to let the fact it is Olympic season change my thinking too much. We still have a lot of races to go before qualifying and I just want to stay really present, take each race as it comes and enjoy myself.”
The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association is based at the University of Bath, a UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centre, with athletes doing their speed and power training on the indoor sprint track and in the High-Performance Gym at the Sports Training Village. They also use the UK’s only push-start track to finetune the all-important start.
“If you are more than two-tenths of a second behind the fastest pusher you’re going to have a really hard time winning a medal,” Coltman explained. “If you’ve got that really fast push, you’re almost off to a head start and you’re ahead of the pack so it’s a very advantageous thing to have.”
British Skeleton – one of the most successful Olympic nations with seven medals since 2002, three of them gold – are targeting the maximum three Olympic quota places in both the men’s and women’s competitions.
Visit thebbsa.co.uk and teambath.com/skeleton to find out more.
With thanks to Team Bath
