TEAM GB have pulled off the perfect Italian Job – and unlike Michael Caine they WILL bring back home the bullion.
The 1969 British comedy caper saw a group of Cockney criminals, led by , steal gold from security services in Italy and drive away with the loot stashed in Mini Cooper cars.
Team GB made history when Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won gold
Team GB won two gold medals in the same Winter Olympics for the first time ever after Matt Weston also prevailed
The classic film ended on a cliffhanger – with the bus and the gold prize hanging precariously over a mountain edge, possibly bound for the bottom of a ravine.
Fifty-seven years later and a generation of skeleton slides and snowboarders do not have that same worry – they can jump on their flights home next week knowing they have rewritten the record books.
Whatever happens over the next week, and there are more medal chances to come, the will go down in history as Britain’s greatest in the 102-year history of the Winter Olympics.
Never before had they won TWO gold medals at the same Winters. That has all changed after Matt Weston, a sensational athlete, on Friday night, and now won the snowboard cross mixed team event.
Weston, 28, led from the front, breaking the track record four times and showing no signs of nerves or pressure as he stormed to victory.
Under brilliant blue skies in Livigno, amid subzero temperatures, Bankes and Nightingale combined to win Britain’s FIRST gold medal on snow.
Britain is not an alpine nation – it does not have mountain ranges covered in snow all year round – and this success has come at a hefty cost.
More than £25.5million to be precise – that is how much seven winter sports have received in UK Sport funding over the past four-year cycle.
Whether it is worth it or not – whether it does indeed inspire a generation – remains to be seen.
But 30 years since National Lottery funding began, there is finally some reward at the .
A complete contrast to the 2022 Beijing flop when the curlers saved blundering ’s blushes on the final weekend.
Before coming to Milan-Cortina, Britain had won 12 gold medals before at the Winter Olympics.
Skeleton has been, by far, the most successful winter sport for Britain with Amy Williams (2010), Lizzy Yarnold (2014 and 2018) and Weston (2026) leading the way down the ice chutes.
Curling is not far behind that, thanks to male curlers in 1924, Rhona Martin’s housewives in Salt Lake City in 2022 and Eve Muirhead’s redemption-seeking stars last time out.
The most famous gold had been the perfect routine by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean to Ravel’s Bolero on Valentine’s Day in 1984 in Sarajevo.
Figure skaters Jeannette Altwegg (1952), John Curry (1976) and Robin Cousins (1980) deserved honourable mentions for their dance routines.
Other golds include the men’s ice hockey squad in 1936 and Robin Dixon and Tony Nash in the two-man bobsleigh at Innsbruck 1964.
While Britain will never match the likes of Norway, United States, Sweden or near neighbours France on ice or snow, this is still a moment to savour and celebrate.
And as of day nine, they are above Canada, China and Finland in the medal table.
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Eze Chidiebere Paul
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