Well, of course they're not noticably bony but you'll see what I mean: the winter Olympics is a week old and the cabinet was bare...(as expected really!) but yesterday in Vancouver Amy Williams won Britain's first solo Winter Olympics gold medal for 30 years with victory in the women's skeleton! And in fact it's the first British woman's individual gold at a Winter Games since 1952.* At the last Winter Olympics a silver in the Skeleton won by Shelley Rudman was the Great Britain's only medal and, as Ollie Williams reiterated last year, this was Great Britain's most likely Winter Olympic medal hope.Interestingly (for me), at the FIBT World Cup last year in Lake Placid (FIBT - International Bobsleigh and Tobogganing Federation) Shelley got the silver and, exactly a year ago also in Lake Placid, Amy Williams won silver at the World Championships; guess where Great Britain's last individual gold was? 1980, Lake Placid: Robin Cousins, figure skating. Clearly team GB needs to relocate!
*Update 10:30am: I could be mistaken but I think this is ONLY the 4th ever solo GB Winter Olympics gold medal and the FIRST EVER that wasn't figure skating. It also puts in fine perspective how fantastic the back-to-back golds in 1976, 1980 and 1984 was [John Curry, Robin Cousins (male figure skating) and Torville & Dean (pairs) respectively].
3 comments:
I'm surprised we don't do better at the skeleton. Given the fact that we've had weeks of snow and we are a nation of fatties you'd think somebody would have put the snow together with the biscuit tin lids and made us champions before.
Anyway well done to our latest Winter Olympic Champion - I may just be still alive to see the next one.
Next time...maybe: this winter would have awoken in many a latent enthusiasm for all things snow and ice.
The viewing figures are smaller than those for the Peruvian weather channel and it's on TV after midnight, I can't see anybody being awoken let alone latent enthusiasm. His cousin Latent Hewitt was a good tennis player though wasn't he?
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