GB Snowsport Chief Executive, Victoria Gosling OBE, looks back a record-breaking four-year journey for GB Snowsport

As I sit down to write this, I’m in Santa Caterina, just about an hour’s drive from Livigno Snow Park. Our World Cup season may have ended over the weekend with a final burst of British successes in Silvaplana, Mt. St. Anne, and Les Contamines Montojoie, but the on-snow work isn’t quite done yet. The British Alpine Championships are in full swing and, just as we experienced in Livigno and across Italy during February and March, British athletes here are continuing to show that they’ve earned the right to be recognised among the world’s best snowsport competitors.

On Sunday, after four years of graft and fight, the clock stopped on major competitions in the Milan-Cortina cycle.

Our record: 199 major podiums across the four years, derived from athletes in eleven Olympic and Paralympic disciplines, and from Telemark.

This season alone saw British athletes climb the podium on 50 occasions. If we included podiums on the Europa Cup circuit, we’d be looking at something closer to 300 across the past four years. And, of course, some of these were on the biggest stages of all. Those three Olympic and Paralympic medals will become iconic moments in British sporting history, but I promise you every single one of those 199 podiums over these past four years was deeply special.

It is, I think most would agree, one of the most remarkable British sporting success stories of recent times: an achievement of extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, levels.

What’s more is that this time four years ago, it’s a story that most people wouldn’t have seen coming.

The end of the Beijing cycle was brutal. There’d been incredible moments along the way – Dave Ryding’s legendary Kitzbuehel World Cup win perhaps most prominent of all – but the Beijing Olympic campaign had been harrowing. The Paralympics was hugely impressive, but after a hugely challenging few years of covid disruption, the lack of successes for our Olympians in Beijing was a real setback. That’s the reality of elite sport, though. You learn as much from your failures as you do your successes. And the lessons we learned then have been the rocket fuel that’s propelled us to where we are today.

Right from day one of the 2023 season, you could tell the energy was different. The wins we racked up along the way are victories of talent, culture, dedication, bravery, and work ethic. And they come from a place of fearless belief in our levels. We knew we had the raw ability, and every single member of the team – athlete and staff member alike – has moved mountains to ensure we saw it deliver.

In that first year of the cycle, we broke the 50-podium barrier for the first time. The next year we broke it again. And this year, we did so for the third time in four years. The one year we missed it, we still delivered 46 major podiums, a result which would have been the best in British history at any time before 2023.

It’s not been an easy journey, nor smooth sailing, along the way. Our team have faced down injuries, disappointments, challenges, fears, and barriers to achieve what they’ve delivered these past four years. We’ve had athletes who’ve helped lay the foundations of success retire, seen staff members depart, watched as other nations with deeper pockets have pushed the dial and force us to step up and respond. And every single time, we have.

What the world sees in medals, we count in resilience, belief, and an unwavering commitment to show that GB Snowsport belongs at the very top of the sport.

What we’ve accomplished couldn’t have been achieved without the amazing support we’ve received. From our partners, our sponsors, our teammates. From the friends and families of our athletes and team members, who give so much of the support that allows us to do what we do. And, of course, from the fans whose belief in what we’re building together has transmitted energy into the team time and time again.

The journey doesn’t end here. Four years from now, we’ll be looking back on another ‘home’ Games – this time, in the French Alps. Some of the names that lit up the Milan-Cortina Games will still be a driving force in the sport. Others, I’m sure, will be among the athletes lining up here at the British Alpine Champs, at the Brits in Mayrhofen this week, or elsewhere in the world, honing their skills, who aren’t yet household names but promise to become so in the next four years.

Whatever those next four years hold, it promises to be exciting. Four years ago, I hoped we could keep faith in the promise that British skiers and snowboarders could demonstrate themselves to be among the best in the world. In four years’ time, I hope we’ll be looking back at today and thinking ‘look how far we’ve come again’.

Don’t look away.

You won’t want to miss a second.