The first group of athletes selected for Team GB’s biggest ever Winter Olympic squad left Heathrow for Pyeongchang on Friday.
A record 59 athletes were announced in the squad as the British Olympic Association targets a record five medals next month, although it hopes to win as many as 10. The world champion speed skater, Elise Christie – who was among the first wave of athletes flying on Friday – and the reigning Olympic skeleton champion, Lizzy Yarnold, will lead the charge. The BOA also has high hopes for its ski and snowboarding team, having confirmed that a record 25 athletes will be competing across alpine, cross country and freestyle skiing plus snowboarding in Pyeongchang – four more than the 1956 Games in Cortina.
The team are particularly strong in ski slopestyle, with James Woods, a four‑times World Cup winner who finished fifth in Sochi, one of the favourites in the men’s event and Izzy Atkin and Katie Summerhayes, who have reached the podium in World Cups, among those in contention in the women’s competition.
Katie Ormerod also has a strong medal chance, particularly in big air having finished on the podium in five of her past 10 World Cups.
With the ski and snowboard squad having an average age of only 24, the team leader, Dan Hunt, predicted Pyeongchang would be a major step on a path that could make Great Britain one of the world’s leading snowsports nations.
“We are going to be competing in more disciplines in Pyeongchang than we have before and we’ve never had more athletes heading to an Olympics with genuine expectations about how well their performances will stack up against the best in the world,” he said.
“You can never predict how the results will fall but I am certain we’re going to South Korea with opportunities to deliver more world-class performances than a British ski and snowboard team ever have at an Olympic Games.”
