Great Britain’s best hopes of gold at these Winter Olympics have suffered a setback after skeleton’s governing body banned its new aerodynamic helmets for being the wrong shape.
Team GB’s Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt have dominated skeleton all season, winning all seven of the World Cup races between them, and are strong favourites to win gold and silver in Milan.
However, they were hoping to increase their chances of glory even further in Milano Cortina with a new helmet. Yet having trialled it in San Moritz last week, it has now emerged that the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation quickly banned the helmets on 29 January, saying they “did not comply with the IBSF skeleton rules based on its shape”.
Team GB have now appealed the decision to the court of arbitration for sport, arguing the design and manufacture of the helmet meets rigorous safety standards. The appeal will be heard on Thursday, with the verdict expected on Friday. Weston and Wyatt will compete next Thursday and Friday (12 and 13 February).
UK Sport has spent £5,765,123 of National Lottery funding on skeleton sliders over the past four years, and has been rewarded with Weston in particular dominating the sport. Last year the 28-year-old became world champion for a second time, beating his closest rival Wyatt by 1.9secs. This season, Weston has won five races and Wyatt two.
Speaking just before the Games, UK Sport’s performance director Kate Baker had admitted Team GB had been using new tech in the buildup, especially in skeleton and bobsleigh, and had been using their own wind tunnel to improve performance. “Critically, what’s exciting about the way that the skeleton and bobsleigh programme are now working is that they are fully integrated together,” she said.
“They used to be separate programmes. They’re now overseen by the same performance director, Nat Dunman. She has overseen an integrated research and investment programme which has brought some real fruit, as you will see from the performances that we’re already producing,”
Asked whether technical upgrades are deliberately held back for the Olympics, Baker added: “Historically, you could turn up at the Games and you could just pull out a totally brand new kit set-up, send the athletes out on it, and they’d suddenly find seconds. You just can’t do that any more.”
She added: “Our innovation team at the UK Sports Institute works with a number of critical partners. Whether those are related to Formula One or related to cycling, we now have, which is a unique position for us, our own wind tunnel which we can get into and test consistently, which we are doing with our skeleton athletes.”
This is not the first time that the Great Britain’s skeleton team has been the subject of controversy on the eve of a Winter Olympics. In 2018, the Guardian reported that other teams had raised eyebrows that they were using custom-made aerodynamic suits that provided a “massive” improvement on the conventional equivalents. However, the suits were declared legal by the IBSF.
