Team GB’s Matt Weston broke the track record in Cortina d’Ampezzo twice as he made a winning start to his Olympic skeleton campaign.
The first day of the men’s skeleton heats has been dominated by the news that Ukrainian athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified by the IOC for refusing to back down on wearing a helmet honouring fellow Ukrainian athletes who have been killed during the Russian war.
The 27-year-old had a meeting with IOC president Kirsty Coventry shortly before the start of the heats, in which he reiterated his insistence on wearing the helmet, which is decorated with images of his compatriots who have been killed.
The IOC responded by banning him from competition and revoking his accreditation. He wrote on social media afterwards: “This is the price of our dignity”.
The competition duly got underway without Heraskevych, who had set the fastest time in a training session on Wednesday and was among the medal contenders.
He said on Wednesday: “An Olympic medal would be huge. Since my childhood, it’s my big dream. But in this time, in time of full-scale war, some things are really more important than medals. At this point, I would say that a medal is worthless in comparison to people's lives, and I believe in comparison to memory of these athletes.”
Weston, the reigning world champion and overall World Cup winner this season, was the first to take to the start line in the Cortina Sliding Centre.
He made a minor mistake early on the track, clipping a wall, but recovered well and steered excellently down the second half of the course to set a new track record of 56.21.
Weston has gone quicker in training this week, with a time of 56.11, and with three heats to go has room to improve even on that time. He smiled and waved to the crowds afterwards and seemed satisfied with his performance.
His teammate, Marcus Wyatt, who finished third in the overall World Cup standings, finished seventh after the first heat in 56.52, 0.31 seconds slower than Weston.
He clocked the exact same time at the first time check but he and every other athlete lost precious tenths of a second to Weston in the lower half of the course in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Germany’s Axel Jungk - the silver medallist in Beijing - clocked the second-fastest time, just six-hundredths of a second behind Weston, with Italy Amedeo Bagnis in third, 0.16 seconds back.
In the second of two heats on Thursday, defending champion Christopher Grotheer set a track record of 56.16, only to see his teammate and Beijing silver medallist Axel Jungk break that moments later, shaving another four-hundredths of a second off his time.
But Weston, competing last in the second heat, built up a phenomenal advantage, making no errors at the top this time and stretching it out across the entire track.
His final time of 55.88 was the first to go sub-56 seconds and broke Jungk’s short-lived track record by another three-tenths. He punched the air and roared with delight as his pitch for a gold medal got off to a superb start, with a total time of 1:52.09 going into the final two heats.
He said: “I am after perfection and I still made some mistakes on that second run. It is an amazing place to be, the fact I have got some mistakes and things to clear up and I am sitting in top spot, it is a lovely place to be.”
Wyatt remained seventh, +1.12 seconds off Weston’s time.
The competition concludes with another two heats on Friday, with the athlete with the lowest aggregate time the winner. On the basis of two superb performances today Weston remains the man to beat, and GB’s best hope of a gold medal at this Winter Games.
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