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Winter Olympics 2022: Team GB medal count still at zero but ‘happiness is sometimes better’
The British team have yet to pick up any silverware at the Games and their target of as many as seven looks far-fetched, even fanciful
February 12, 2022 12:07 pmBEIJING – For the second time this week, Charlotte Bankes found herself standing in the snow trying to sum up the disappointment of defeat.
It is not something the world No 1 is used to doing very often, having dominated the World Cup circuit in the run-up to the Games and claiming favourite status for the women’s snowboard cross, only to crash out in the quarter-finals.
She was not quite expected to provide a medal in the mixed relay event, making its Games debut, with 20-year-old Huw Nightingale her team-mate with just a couple of months of World Cup experience under his belt.
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In that context, their sixth-place finish was more than respectable and it is a sign of how disappointing Team GB’s Games have been that it is the second-best result so far after Kirsty Muir’s fifth in the Big Air event.Most observers had expected Great Britain to have collected at least two medals by now – Bankes and then the mixed doubles curling – but instead they find themselves checking the record books for the last time Team GB failed to bring one home with them (Albertville 1992, lifetime ago in terms of British winter sports).
The athletes are putting a brave face on things. Nightingale, all six feet of him and more, was determined to make his team-mate laugh in their post-race interview, insisting she never falls at all and delighting in his achievement of a sixth place at a first Olympic Games.
He said: “Sometimes the game isn’t always about medals, and so long as we’re one team and we stay confident as a team and happy…
“Happiness is sometimes better than medals in my eyes […] but medals are always a bonus.”
He insisted there was something to celebrate too, giddy with the thin mountain air and rarefied atmosphere of an Olympic Games; Nightingale will almost certainly be there again at Milano Cortina 2026, perhaps with Bankes seeking redemption. They will expect much more than sixth place if both are fit and firing.
Not everyone is as optimistic as Nightingale. Cross-country skiers Andrew Musgrave and Andrew Young finished 46th and 51st in the 15km classic. “I can’t really understand what went on today,” Musgrave said. Young, who was late arriving in Beijing because he caught Covid, said he was “trying to be positive” rather than dig himself in a hole and be “grumpy”.
Grumpy would be a good way to sum up the skeleton sliders too. Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt were 15th and 16th in the men’s singles, and tried not to blame their equipment – but did question whether the set-up they were using was right. Their female counterparts, who were both a second off the pace after just one run and went further backwards after that, made similar comments.
Every athlete is different, as are their goals and their reactions. But at home the public are interested in, for the most part, just one thing: medals. And so far, the 50 athletes in the British team have not delivered any.
“Medals are always a bonus.” At this point, they are more than just a bonus.
‘Happiness is sometimes better than medals’ - Team GB still without Olympic silverware
The British team have yet to pick up any silverware at the Games and their target of as many as seven looks far-fetched, even fanciful
inews.co.uk
