Vancouver 2010 – What are our prospects?

The fantastic news that young Brit Tom Daley has become Great Britain’s first diving world champion got me thinking about our prospects for Vancouver 2010, who are the runners and riders and have we got any chance of a medal?

At the last winter olympics in Turin in 2006, team GBs only medal was Shelley Rudman’s skeleton silver. However, for the first time in history Team GB will go into the winter olympics with two reigning world champions, which has got to be a good start! In April David Murdoch led Scotland to victory at the World Curling Championships and prior to that in February Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke sped to the top of the podium at the World Bobsleigh Championships.  Things are also looking promising for the ice hockey teams with all four of the national ice hockey teams celebrated winning World Championship medals last season for the first time in history.

In light of the above the British Olympic Association is hoping for a big improvement in the medal haul on recent games but unlike the Summer games a medal target hasn’t been set for Team GB. Team GB’s Cheif Executive, Andy Hunt said “We are expecting to take a team of roughly 50 athletes to Vancouver as opposed to the 311 athletes we took to Beijing. Team GB will be one of the smaller teams but we have had a great winter season with many podium finishes. In the women’s bobsleigh we are the current World Champions and there have been notable performances in women’s snowboard cross, women’s and men’s curling, women’s and men’s skeleton and the men’s short track speed skating, so there is definitely room for optimism and support from Team GB fans”

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter games will take place from 12-28 February in Vancouver and Whistler in Canada and will be followed by the Winter Paralympic games from 12-21 March.