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BRITISH Olympic Association chairman Sir Hugh Robertson declared it mission accomplished after Team GB were welcomed home from their most successful Winter Olympics.
Britain’s athletes landed at Heathrow Airport yesterday afternoon following a recordbreaking trip to South Korea.
Their five medals in Pyeongchang – gold for Lizzy Yarnold and bronzes for Laura Deas, Dom Parsons, Izzy Atkin and Billy Morgan – was one more than they had previously managed since the inaugural Games back in 1924.
Speaking alongside Yarnold, BOA CEO Bill Sweeney and chef de mission Mike Hay, Robertson said: “We had some pretty serious ambitions before these Games.
“We were confident the team we were sending out was the best-prepared team that have left these shores for a Winter Games, and I think as a nation we always saw this as part of a continuum where we had performed extraordinarily well in three successive summer Olympics, in Beijing, in London and then in Rio.
“Actually winter sport was one of the great improving stories in this country so we were very ambitious about what we were trying to do.”
Britain enjoyed their best day at a Winter Olympics on February 17 when Yarnold retained her bob skeleton title ahead of thirdplaced Deas, after Atkin had earlier claimed the country’s first medal in a skiing event with a ski slopestyle bronze.
Parsons kicked off the medal haul by taking bronze in the skeleton on the previous day before snowboarder Billy Morgan ensured a new entry in the record books by claiming an unexpected third place in the big air on the penultimate day of action.
Looking ahead to the Beijing Games in four years, Robertson added: “It reminded me being out in Pyeongchang that the margins between success and failure at this level are absolutely tiny.
“I think the lesson of this is to not only celebrate everything that’s been achieved, but to look at the huge number of fourth places and people who just missed out by a fraction of a second and work out where this could take British Olympic sport in Beijing.”