Snow hope: Britain seeks medal comeback after Beijing blank

LONDON :Britain's skiers and snowboarders came away empty-handed from Beijing 2022 but medal hopes are rising again as the Milano Cortina Olympics draw near.

Despite "brutal" funding cuts post-Beijing, and ongoing logistical hurdles resulting from Brexit, GB Snowsport CEO Vicky Gosling says her athletes will have all to play for in Italy in February.

"We have got talent that has delivered over the last three years, very transparently delivered at world championship level and competed on a world class stage and outshone many nations," she told Reuters.

"The strength and depth of the team is stronger than it's ever been."

ONLY EVER WON THREE MEDALS ON SNOW 

Britain has won only three Olympic medals on snow, starting with Jenny Jones's bronze in snowboard slopestyle at the 2014 Sochi Games.

The tally doubled at Pyeongchang in 2018 with freestyle skier Izzy Atkin taking slopestyle bronze while Billy Morgan won bronze in snowboarding big air.

After those Games, GB Snowsport's then-performance director Dan Hunt set a four-medal target for 2022 and talked of seven to nine in 2026.

He spoke also of Britain becoming a top-five snow sports nation by 2030.

"We went to Beijing with an ambition to probably rewrite the history books, but the reality was something different," said Gosling, a former Royal Air Force officer, with understatement.

The only British medals in Beijing were on ice, for curling.

COVID-19 was a big issue for skiers without easy access to snow or training facilities and needing to travel, and led to a significant loss of funding. A further three million pounds ($3.93 million) were cut post-Beijing.

Private sponsorship has filled some of the gap, for a national governing body that now has a four-year budget of 7.2 million