Weston & Stoecker win GB’s second gold of day

Team GB made history by winning two Winter Olympic titles on one day for the first time as Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoecker clinched mixed team skeleton gold in thrilling style.

It came after Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the snowboard cross mixed team event earlier on Sunday.

Weston produced a stunning race to make more of his own history in Cortina – he is the first Briton to win two gold medals at a Winter Olympics having claimed individual gold just two days ago.

Stoecker, 25, had given Weston a tough task with her run of 1:00.77, 0.18 seconds off the pace of the Germans, with the British pair – ranked top seeds – the last to run.

But 28-year-old Weston, who won Team GB’s first medal at the Games, showed why he is the best skeleton racer in the world with a sublime 58.59secs run to clinch a second medal with a final time of 1:59:36.

It is also the first time Great Britain have won three gold medals at a single Winter Olympics.

“The individual event is amazing but doing it as a team when we’re normally an individual sport is amazing,” said Weston.

“To have my team-mate by my side as Olympic champions, two-time for me which is crazy. I’m looking forward to the celebrations!”

A second British team, Marcus Wyatt and Freya Tarbit, missed out on a medal by an agonising 0.01secs as the two German teams of Christopher Grotheer and Jacqueline Pfeifer and Axel Jungk and Susanne Kreher took silver and bronze, respectively.

The mixed event, making its debut at Milan-Cortina, sees the sliders hurtle down the track one after the other with a quick reaction time crucial as five red lights going out prompts them to set off.

Pushing off before the lights go out results in heavy penalties or even disqualification and that led to many of the sliders erring on the side of caution with some hesitant starts.

Janine Flock, who won gold on Saturday in the women’s event, blew the Austrian team’s chances when she incurred a one-second penalty for reacting too soon at the start, opening the door for both British teams to get on the podium.

But the two German teams were too good and the only way Wyatt and Tarbit could have got on the podium would have been if Weston and Stoecker had not.