Britain’s most successful day in Winter Olympic history was sealed in style as Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoecker captured gold in the inaugural mixed team skeleton event, moments after Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale triumphed in mixed snowboard cross.
For Weston, it meant history. The 28-year-old became the first British athlete to win two medals at a single Winter Games, having only just been given the presentation case for the medal he collected days earlier. Until then it had been tucked away in a spare sock in his top drawer; now, he has another to place beside it.
Weston and Stoecker posted a combined time of 1min 59.36sec, edging out Germany’s Axel Jungk and Susanne Kreher by 0.17sec.
The mixed team skeleton format made its Olympic debut in Milan–Cortina. Each nation’s fastest man and woman race back-to-back, their times added together. A reaction start—triggered when a light randomly goes out—adds jeopardy, though two false starts among the 15 teams did little to disrupt Weston, who had dominated the week.
“I’m extremely proud of what I’ve achieved over the past couple of days, especially to win the first-ever team event,” Weston said. “It’s absolutely amazing. I’m over the moon, buzzing—and I’ve no idea what’s next. Probably the pub, I guess.”
The pair’s success is rooted in a close bond. They describe themselves as best friends, their families intertwined by years on tour. “It’s like a family, really, because we spend so much time together,” Weston said.
They were the last to race, with the track record already broken five times. Stoecker flew off the start but lost a fraction of time late in her run, leaving Weston needing to claw back three-tenths of a second—an eternity in a sport decided by hundredths.
“I’ve got a lot of trust in him,” Stoecker said. “He’s the individual Olympic champion and his sliding is insane. I had faith he’d produce something special, but it’s always nerve-racking watching the clock.”
At the start house, Weston pulled his helmet down to avoid watching Stoecker’s splits. “All I could hear was my coach calling the times, and all I was thinking was: don’t false start.”
He launched with a 0.12sec reaction—the quickest of the 30 competitors—and produced another faultless run. “From halfway down I could feel the gold coming,” Stoecker said. So could everyone else.
Even then Weston was picking over tiny imperfections. “Corner nine, I wasn’t quite smooth coming out…” he began, before Stoecker laughed: “Stop it, Matt! You don’t need to do that any more—you’ve got six months off!”
The only sour note was that their victory pushed teammates Freya Tarbit and Marcus Wyatt into fourth place.
Weston now joins a select group of British double Winter Olympic champions, alongside Lizzy Yarnold, who retained her women’s skeleton title in 2014 and 2018.
“There are some great names in British Winter Olympic history,” Weston said. “To even think about putting my name alongside them is a huge honour. They’ve inspired us, and their success opened the door for this.”
