The UK is not a natural winter sports centre but can yet improve

As our ‘On This Day’ list of past events show opposite (in the print edition), a Briton — Robin Cousins — won gold for figure staking in the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Four years later, Torvill and Dean, the English ice skaters, not only won gold at Sarajevo but became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time.

These wonderful triumphs are remembered decades later.

Yet the Great Britain team rarely comes home from any winter games with a major medal haul.

This is no surprise: the UK gets barely any snow outside of Scotland, and can hardly be expected to compete with huge nations such as France, Russia, Canada and America, where many people grow up in mountainous locations that have snow six months of the year, and with plenty of resorts in which to practice.

And while such large countries have a particular advantage, so too do small countries like Norway, with a population the size of Scotland but which at its most southerly point is still north of almost all of Britain, and where everyone is used to entrenched winter conditions.

Aimee Fuller, from Bangor, makes this point in explaining the disappointing Team GB result in the Beijing games, which ended on Sunday. Pointing out that it has been a triumph for many of the UK competitors even to qualify, she gives this optimistic assessment of winter sport: “The biggest misconception is that to ski, you have to have a lot of money, and nowadays — it’s not. I started on a dry slope in Bromley, south London, aged four, skiing.”

The UK has in the last 25 years achieved massive success in the summer Olympics and in sports such as tennis, above all because it began to make training in them a national priority using lottery funding. This saw Britain go from getting an average of 20 or so medals in the 1980s to 60+ latterly.

Our geographic location means that we are unlikely to become a leading winter sport nation but we can yet improve.

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