Team GB’s athletes have returned home to a rapturous welcome after their most successful Winter Olympics ever.
The competitors landed at London’s Gatwick Airport on Monday morning after securing a record-equalling tally of medals in total.
They were led out of arrivals to cheers from the waiting public by Matt Weston, the double gold medal-winning skeleton competitor.
Team GB’s total haul of five medals was also achieved in 2014 and 2018 but their three golds in 2026 were more than at any other winter Games.
Team GB took home two golds in the Games’ middle weekend: the first for Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale in the mixed team snowboarding, and the second for Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker in the mixed team skeleton.
Weston won his second gold medal of the Games alongside Stoecker, after picking up his first in the men’s singles skeleton on 13 February.
Tabby Stoecker said: “This welcome has been completely overwhelming. I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet how much the nation had got behind us and that’s just incredible, especially for our sport which is quite niche so we don’t always get that much attention.”
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It was the first time Team GB had secured two gold medals on a single day at a winter Games.
Huw Nightingale, who won gold with Charlotte Bankes in the mixed team snowboarding cross, was wearing his medal as he walked into the arrivals hall.
He told Sky News: “It feels amazing around my neck.
“It’s just a crazy thing to think that I’m a gold medallist now, it’s been a long journey.”
“Being there you don’t realise how big it’s actually become in the UK.”
“It’s an amazing feeling to see how people are supporting us, it being a winter games just means even more for us for all the support.”
When asked how he was going to unwind, Grant Hardie, curling silver medallist said: “You put so much into so many hours of training and it’s just going to be nice to have a complete switch off, it’s going to be not thinking about curling for a few months at least, and try to get on the golf course.”
Halfpipe skiing bronze medallist, Zoe Atkin, described the experience as “surreal,” saying her medal was “really heavy, but it feels really good”.
Atkin, whose sister also won bronze in the 2018 Winter Olympics, joked that “when I get home, we’re going to weigh them” both.
She said seeing her sister win in 2018 was a “huge inspiration” and “to be able to back her up eight years later with my own bronze is just so special”.
Speaking to Sky News’ sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao during the Games, Weston said it took a “certain type of person” to take part in the skeleton event.
“To get over that fear when you first start and you go down and you have no brakes,” he said.
“Whether you have a good run, a bad run, you crash or don’t crash, you are going to the bottom because it’s just sheet ice. Once you get over the fear and apprehension about that, it’s so much fun.”
