Team GB FINALLY win first medal at Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics as Matt Weston claims skeleton gold after days of heartbreak and near misses

Matt Weston won skeleton gold at the Winter Olympics to end Team GB’s long wait for a medal in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Weston turned an overnight lead into victory at the Cortina Skating Center to become the first person to win the Olympic skeleton crown and the first athlete to win an individual event at the Games since Lizzy Yarnold defended her title in Pyeongchang eight years ago.

The 28-year-old double world champion came into these Games as the strong favorite and clinched Team GB’s first medal in Italy with an overall time of 3:43.33.

Supported by fiancé Alex Howard-Jones and his family in Cortina, Weston entered the second day of the men’s competition with a healthy 0.30 lead over the rest of the field, clocking 56.21 in the first run to improve to 55.88 in the second round.

After his third run of 55.63, he increased his advantage to 0.39 and finished 0.88 ahead of silver medalist Axel Jungk of Germany. Jungk’s compatriot and Beijing 2022 champion Christopher Grotheer won the bronze medal.

Weston’s victory came after days of painful heartbreak for Team GB, which is backed by £25 million in funding for this Olympic cycle.

Weston was supported in Cortina by her family, including her fiancé Alex Howard-Jones.

Freestyle skier Kirsty Muir, snowboarder Mia Brookes and curlers Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds finished fourth in their respective events before ice dancers Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson also missed out on a medal.

But Weston had no such problem as he became the 13th British athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. Teammate Marcus Wyatt finished ninth.

For Weston and Wyatt, preparations for the event were dominated by a row over the British team’s helmets, which were deemed illegal.

The England duo have instead returned to the helmets they used to dominate the 2025-26 World Cup season; Weston won five of the seven races, and Wyatt won the other two.

The skeleton competition was overshadowed by the controversial disqualification of Ukrainian Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was sensationally kicked out of the competition for trying to wear a helmet depicting athletes killed in the war with Russia.

Heraskevych appealed the decision, but on Friday the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his request.

Weston is engaged to Howard-Jones, chief operating officer and founding member of pltfrm search, a specialist executive search firm based in London.

The couple is set to marry in July and they both have a ten-year-old cocker spaniel named Logan.

Weston parlayed his overnight lead into a dominant victory to clinch his first Olympic title

Weston started his sports career in a completely different field. Born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, he took part in competitive taekwondo.

He won gold and silver medals at the European Cup in 2012, and silver and bronze medals at the International Taekwondo Federation World Cup in 2014.

However, he left sports when he was only 17 years old due to a broken back.

Instead he focused his attention on rugby, representing Kent, Sevenoaks RFC and Saracens Academy College.

He was eventually introduced to skeleton in 2017 by weightlifting coach Chris Dear through the British Skeleton Discover Your Gold talent identification scheme.

To prepare for the sport, he completed a period of training with the Royal Marines to test his physical and mental fitness.

She made her competitive debut in 2019 at the European Cup in Winterberg, Germany, placing 15th, then won the silver medal in Igls, Austria, and the bronze medal in Altenberg, Germany.

Won gold for Great Britain at the men’s World Cup in 2021; it was the first win in the sport in almost 14 years.

After competing under a new coach at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, he won the European title in 2023 and became world champion a week later, defending his title in 2025.