Special delivery can help Team GB give it their best shot
BRITAIN cannot offer its skiers much snow, its sliding sports do not have a track and there is just one curling rink outside of Scotland.
The bobsledders pretty much fund themselves, the long-track speed skaters sell coffee to pay their way and the cross-country skiers live in Norway.
The UK is unlikely to be a winter sport superpower any time soon. In 23 Winter Games we have won just 32 medals.
But here in China our 50 athletes want for nothing. When temperatures plunged so low that traditional winter sport nations squealed, Team GB got on with it.
When the Germans complained of having no hot food, our lot wondered what all the fuss was about.
The reason is that while they mostly lack 18-carat medal-winning credentials, their support package is of the platinum variety.
Before these Games, freight containers full of survival kits arrived from the UK as part of operation Home from Home.
For the first time at a Winter Olympics, performance training spaces were created exclusively for Team GB in the three Games hubs in and around Beijing.
From Alex spink in Beijing
Ten Wattbikes, a crosscountry treadmill and six fully kitted Olympic lifting areas were set up.
Seventy sofas, 180 mattress toppers and 40 Smart TVs helped furnish the Brits’ accommodation blocks, along with five PlayStation 4 consoles and 15 bicycles.
There are phones with Hong Kong SIM cards for athletes and support staff to stay close to family and friends.
More than 3,000 tea bags have been shipped to a nation not exactly strangers to the stuff, along with 160 tins of baked beans, 1,200 coffee pods and gallons of fruit squash and oat milk.
“We pride ourselves in creating the best set-up possible in a temporary constructed environment,” said Scott
Field, the BOA spokesman. “Home from home, that’s our strategy.”
About £28million has been invested in this Beijing Olympic cycle and it comes with no guarantees, although an impressive showing in ski big air from Scottish teenager Kirsty Muir in qualifying for today’s final warmed
British blood. Prediction specialists Gracenote have Team GB down for just three medals here. The BOA’s calculation is that a talent identification programme which trawls non-winter sports for convertible talent will unearth more gems.
But also that by offering such enviable support, others will follow the example of snowboard cross world champion Charlotte Bankes, left, who formerly represented France, in switching allegiances – and redress the balance between hope and glory.