Why 2026 marks a Winter Olympic turning point for Team GB

If someone had told you 16 days ago that Team GB would win three gold medals at the Winter Olympics, would you have believed it?

Perhaps not – but it happened.

Tonight, flagbearers Matt Weston and Charlotte Bankes will lead Team GB into the closing ceremony in Verona as the curtains are drawn on a historic Games for the nation.

In winning five medals, GB has equalled its record best from both 2014 and 2018.

But it has been the nation’s most successful Winter Olympics since the moment snowboarders Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the second of those golds in the mixed team snowboard cross.

Never before had Great Britain won more than one gold medal at a Winter Olympics. That fact has now been buried deep in the snow.

Weston kick-started the golden rush, withstanding the heavy pressure on his shoulders to win the men’s skeleton title that was always his to lose.

On what has come to be known as ‘Super Sunday’, Bankes and Nightingale won Team GB’s first Olympic gold medal on snow, a victory that was followed just a few hours later by Weston and Tabby Stoecker’s mixed team success at the Cortina Sliding Centre.

On the penultimate night of competition, the men’s curling team – skipped by Bruce Mouat – won their second successive Olympic silver, before freestyle skier Zoe Atkin wrapped up Team GB’s Games the next day with bronze in the halfpipe.

“These Games have been amazing, and a history-making Games,” Team GB chef de mission Eve Muirhead told BBC Sport.

“This Games has really proven that we are capable, that we have so much potential, and we’re growing. We’re a growing winter nation, which is really exciting.

But for all the medals, there were all the near-misses.

In total, there were five fourth-place finishes, some of which were by the most narrow of margins.

Take freestyle skier Kirsty Muir, for example. Just 0.41 of a point was the difference between bronze and fourth place in the slopestyle.

Had she not squatted on a landing on her final run, she would have made the podium.

Agonisingly, she then recorded another fourth in the big air.

Snowboarder Mia Brookes, meanwhile, knew she needed to go huge on her final big air run for a chance of a medal – and so she did.

She landed a competition-first backside 1620 trick – featuring four-and-a-half rotations – but over-rotated at the very last moment.

Had she landed it cleanly, she would have won a medal.

“Fourths make champions,” GB Snowsport chief executive Vicky Gosling told BBC Sport.

“We are fourth in the world. Kirsty’s from Aberdeen, she started on the dry slopes. Mia started on the dry slopes in Manchester and then look where they’ve got to. We should be utterly proud of what we’ve achieved here.”

Around the Games, there were plenty of other performances that may not have brought home a medal, but were record-breaking in their own right.

In cross-country skiing, Andrew Musgrave and James Clugnet recorded a fifth-place finish in the team sprint event, the nation’s best Olympic result in the sport.

That bettered Musgrave’s sixth in the 10km interval start freestyle, while Anna Pryce recorded a best British women’s result at an Olympics with her 32nd place in the sprint classic.

Stoecker, Freya Tarbit and Amelia Coltman all finished in the top 10 of the women’s skeleton, while there were more than 20 top-10 finishes in total.

“I think because of the depth and breadth across so many sports and disciplines, it shows that we are not a one-trick pony,” said UK Sport’s director of performance Kate Baker.

Team GB will fly home on Monday, after which the post-Games reviews will begin, by both the British Olympic Association and the individual sports themselves.

Over the four-year cycle leading into the Milan-Cortina Games, UK Sport ploughed £25.5m into winter sports on the Olympic programme, up from £22.2m for the Beijing 2022 cycle.

The funding for the next cycle, leading up to the 2030 Games, will be confirmed and announced in the summer, though the individual sports have already received a provisional figure for planning purposes.

But while an important metric, funding isn’t just based on the number of medals won, or a reward for it. UK Sport also looks at future potential, as well as the impact and resonance on the watching British public.

Baker told BBC Sport Team GB’s athletes had gone “above and beyond” in delivering value for money, and asked how that success is now built on, she said: “The reality is we’ve been thinking about it for the past four years. Already the work is in place to build for that next Games and indeed the one after.

“We’ve got some real talent coming through, there is no shortage of British talent, and we know we can show that we can mix it with the best on the world stage when it matters.

“The next four years is about supporting that talent that’s coming through and also making sure that we do everything we can so that when they get here on finals day, they are absolutely at their best.”

UK Sport’s investment is not an ever-growing pot, however, and sports are being encouraged to work together and share resources where possible to build towards the greater good.

Gosling, whose GB Snowsport organisation received £7.3m in UK Sport funding for its 2026 Olympic programme but has had to bring in extra commercial revenue, said: “We know we have the talent and the capability and the world has now seen it.

“We can deliver medals with what we have. We have demonstrated that, but we have greater potential than we’re demonstrating right now.”

She added: “This is just the start. This is not the peak for us. There’s so much more that we can achieve. And I’m super excited because the athletes that are competing and are just near missing, are those athletes that are still very young with a great future ahead of them.