"It is all after Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker won Great Britain's 10th and 11th Olympic medals in the sport, continuing a lineage that reaches back to 1928, when it was the winter sport of choice for the most reckless of a set of aristocratic adventurers. The 11th Earl of Northesk won bronze ahead of his teammate, and the pre-race favourite, Lord Brabazon of Tara. It is some legacy."
"Skeleton is, believe it or not, a British invention even though there is not a track or enough snow to dust the hundred or so miles of ski pistes in the country. Like so much else about modern sport, it is all down to the Victorians, who took it up on the natural ice track in St Moritz when the town was a regular stop on the Grand Tour."
"The International Olympic Committee decided to make it a regular event from the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City onwards and the small British federation secured just enough funding from UK Sport to set up a training base and employ the Austrian former world champion Andi Schmid as head coach. It paid off when the former track athlete Alex Coomber won bronze in the women's event that year."
3,500 people signed up to audition for the skeleton Talent ID programme in three days, an extraordinary surge for an inaccessible sport. Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker won Great Britain's 10th and 11th Olympic medals in skeleton. The sport's lineage reaches back to 1928 when aristocratic adventurers favoured St Moritz; the 11th Earl of Northesk won bronze ahead of Lord Brabazon of Tara. After a century of competition, Britain leads the skeleton all-time Olympic medal table. Skeleton originated with Victorians on St Moritz's Cresta Run. The IOC made skeleton a regular Olympic event from 2002, and British funding and coaching investment yielded Olympic medals.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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