More British misery as skeleton crew fall short

IT comes to something when even the skeleton crew offer no way out for Team GB. For 20 years this discipline has been a consistent source of Winter Olympic medals but that streak ended on Saturday as the wider losing run extended.

Beijing 2022 really isn’t working well for Britain, who have zero medals through eight days and a diminishing list of prospects going to the second week.

Of all those to fall short, perhaps the most baffling so far is the skeleton set-up, which was funded with more than £6million of lottery money and returned nothing, with a tearful Laura Deas finishing 19th and her team-mate Brogan Crowley not qualifying for the final run.

Deas’ father, Ewan, said: ‘British skeleton have an awful lot of thinking to do. The sled builders in particular. The athletes are doing their best, they are starting well, they are sliding well, the speed is being haemorrhaged by the kit.’

His daughter, who took bronze four years ago, said: ‘The fact it’s nowhere near what I wanted shouldn’t take away from the fact I put down some pretty good runs,’ she said. ‘Clearly we’re lacking speed and that’s something we will have to look at carefully.’

Earlier, Lilah Fear and Ayrshire’s Lewis Gibson finished the first part of the ice dance in 10th to successfully qualify ahead of Monday’s free dance final.

Gibson, 27, is bullish of a good show in the final and said: ‘When things are really pushed to a performance maximum in our discipline, that can be rewarded by the judges.’

Charlotte Bankes was sixth in the mixed team race with Huw Nightingale. Eve Muirhead’s curlers made it two wins from four with a strong 10-5 victory over the USA.

Muirhead said: ‘We’ve got some momentum now. We need to remember the good things we did because we dwell too much on mistakes sometimes.’