Weston retains title as Wyatt seals GB 1-2
Great Britain won Overall World Cup skeleton gold and silver on Friday when Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt were confirmed as the globe’s best sliders across the eight-race season.
Weston made history by becoming the first British man to retain the Overall World Cup title as he backed up last season’s maiden success.
The 27-year-old won medals in seven of the eight races - with today’s eighth-place finish in Norway the only time he didn’t make the podium over the entire season.
Weston finished on 1640 points, 83 clear of his team-mate Wyatt in second and 178 ahead of Germany’s reigning Olympic Champion, Christopher Grotheer, in third.
He joins Kristan Bromley (2004 and 2008) and Alex Coomber (2000, 2001 and 2002) as the country’s only multiple World Cup Champions.
“To come away with two Crystal Globes in a row and do something no British man has ever done is pretty special,” said Weston, who won gold medals in St Moritz and Winterberg; silver in Sigulda, Altenberg and Beijing; and bronze twice in PyeongChang this season.
“I don’t think what I’ve achieved this season and over the past few years has sunk in yet and it probably won’t until I retire.
To have British athletes ranked No1 and 2 in the world when we don’t even have an ice track in the UK is amazing, really.
“It’s a bitter sweet one at the moment, though: I’ve done what I wanted to by retaining the title but I’m disappointed with today’s result. We set high standards for ourselves and we’re not happy if we finish outside the medals. That’s a big change in mindset and it shows how far we’ve come.
“We’ve been able to achieve so much this season and we’ve still got more individual and team development to come. We’re in a very good place to go to the Olympics in Milan Cortina next year and absolutely fly.”
Wyatt also joins an elite band of British athletes in having won multiple overall medals following his bronze behind Weston’s silver in 2023. Only Weston, Bromley, Coomber, Olympic silver medalist Shelley Rudman and double Olympic Champion Lizzy Yarnold have achieved that feat in more than a quarter of a century.
The 33-year-old finished third in Friday’s race as he claimed his fifth medal of the World Cup season following gold in Sigulda, a brace of silvers in PyeongChang and an additional bronze in Altenberg.
Today’s competition also doubled as the European Championships, with Wyatt winning continental silver after China’s race winner, Qinwei Lin, was removed from the European standings. Wyatt won the Europeans last year and he came within a whisker of defending his title as he lost out to Austria’s Samuel Maier by just one hundredth of a second.
“We couldn’t really ask for more than GB being one and two in the world - you can’t argue with that,” added Wyatt.
I performed pretty well across the season and I left it all out there today. I’m disappointed to have missed the European title by a hundredth - I’ve been on the wrong side of that 0.01 margin a few times now.
“I’ve been more consistent than previous seasons and been in the medals most weeks and that’s been a big thing for me. It gives me lots of confidence going into the World Championships and the Olympic year.”
Fellow Brit Laurence Bostock finished 17th today in a time of 1 minute 44.08 seconds on his second World Cup appearance of the season. Wyatt and Weston came down in 1 minute 42.82 and 1.43.13 respectively.
There is more skeleton action this weekend, with the women’s competition taking place this afternoon and the team event scheduled for tomorrow. The season then concludes with the World Championships in Lake Placid, USA in March.
