Eve Muirhead will lead bid to top Sochi medal count at Winter Olympics

UK Sport hopes to better Sochi 2014 performance

Great Britain has been tasked with claiming its biggest medal haul in Winter Olympics history after UK Sport announced its targets for Pyeongchang 2018 yesterday.

UK Sport, the funding agency which distributes money to elite Olympic and Paralympic sport, has challenged Britain to win four to 10 medals at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Britain won four medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics, equalling the 1924 haul from Chamonix, but the Sochi haul could rise following the Russian doping scandal.

The XXIII Games begin on February 9 and conclude on February 25.

Perthshire curler Eve Muirhead, who won bronze four years ago, will be one of Team GB’s strongest medal hopes.

UK Sport’s investment for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics cycle was £14 million. That has more than doubled to £32m for Pyeongchang.

UK Sport is targeting ‘at least’ five medals at the Winter Olympics, with four to 10 representing the target range.

For the Winter Paralympics, UK Sport has set a target of at least seven medals, and a range of six to 12 medals.

Team GB won one medal at each of the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics, both in skeleton.

Shelley Rudman took silver in Turin in 2006 and Amy Williams gold four years later in Vancouver.

Lizzy Yarnold succeeded Williams as Olympic skeleton champion at the Sochi 2014 Games in a four-medal haul, which is poised to rise to five.

The disqualification of two Russian sleds following the uncovering of systematic doping means Britain’s fourman bobsleigh team, led by pilot John Jackson, is in line to be promoted from fifth to third.

Official confirmation from the International Olympic Committee is yet to be received.

Britain’s other medals in Russia were won by the men’s curling squad, with silver and bronze medals for the women’s curling team and Jenny Jones bronze in the snowboard slopestyle.

ParalympicsGB won six medals at the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, with visually impaired skier Kelly Gallagher and her guide Charlotte Evans claiming Britain’s first gold on snow in Winter Olympic or Paralympic competition.

The medal target announcement was made at the Korean Cultural Centre UK in central London.