Winter Olympics: Curling medals can’t mask Team GB disappointment after progress of Sochi and Pyeongchang

As Team GB depart Beijing, they have their curlers to thank for a disaster averted, but once the glow of Eve Muirhead & Co.’s gold, as well as men’s silver, on the final weekend fades, it will be difficult to judge these Winter Olympics as much more than a disappointment.

At Winter Games, for a nation devoid of much snow, the fanfare that has accompanied Great Britain’s resurgence as a Summer Games powerhouse since the turn of the century has always been much more muted but five medals at each of the past two editions suggested things were on an upward trajectory in chillier climes, too.

Two in PyeongChang had come from the ski and snowboard programme, prompting then performance director Dan Hunt to set his sights on making Britain a top-five nation on the snow by the 2030 Games, with 10 to 12 medals coming from that team alone.

But the closest anyone came to a medal in Beijing was the youngest member of the team, 17-year-old Kirsty Muir, who was very impressive for her fifth place in the Big Air final.

No medal on snow hardly seemed value for an investment of nearly £10million, although it was hardly the only discipline within the Team GB set-up to struggle in Beijing.

Since skeleton’s introduction to the Winter Games in 2002, Britain has impressively picked up a medal on each occasion. In Beijing, the best they could manage was 15th.

It left much head scratching for the £6.42m investment over the past four years, with Laura Deas, a bronze medallist in 2018, finishing a lowly 19th and unable to explain the lack of speed. The inference in the resulting fall-out – from Deas’ father at least – was that the kit simply wasn’t good enough.

“No one comes to the Olympics especially a previous medallist to finish 19th,” she