GB Snowsport CEO, Vicky Gosling, looks ahead to Milan-Cortina with six months to go until the Olympic opening ceremony

Six weeks ago, or so, the clocks changed in the office.

No, not a much-delayed switch to British Summer Time; the Team GB and ParalympicsGB offices, that GB Snowsport is based out of, switched their Olympic and Paralympic countdown clocks over to Milan-Cortina time. In a very tangible sense, the countdown was on.

And today, the countdown hits a major milestone: six months until the opening ceremony of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

Six months to go isn’t one of the big milestones that draws major attention. It’s not the ‘year to go’ moment that starts to see public attention bubbling away at a low simmer. And it’s not the ‘hundred days to go’ that turns the excitement dial up to ‘overdrive’. But it’s a meaningful one for us, as a sport, because it falls at probably the most interesting moment in the long, four-year build-up to the Games. It’s right there, on the horizon, but still far enough away that we’ve got things got moments to meet before we arrive.

Right now, for all our Olympic disciplines – and our Paralympic disciplines too, although their six-month moment comes in early September – we’re right in the middle of pre-season training. Athletes (and coaches and staff) have mostly had a post-season break, selections have been done, testing has been completed, and we’re now getting the bulk of training miles into legs, working to put every member of the team in the best possible position for success this year. To that end, in the past month alone, we’ve had Alpine athletes on snow in Europe and in Argentina, Freeskiers and Snowboarders on air bags in Austria and Japan, Moguls athletes on water ramps in Europe, the Snowboard Cross team on bikes in Italy, and a whole programme of earlier springtime activity in Les Deux Alpes.

Away from the slopes – dry, water, and snow – the business has been working hard to create the conditions for success. We know that the investment of time that we make now in our central operations is critical when the season gets underway in the early part of the winter, and the work we’re doing on commercial partnerships, sport science preparation, logistics planning, and pre-season preparations are designed specifically to give our teams the support they need when the season comes around.

So, with the clock ticking onwards towards Milan, six months to go acts as an important marker for us. A chance to assess where we stand, make final adjustments, and prepare for what promises to be an intense and thrilling season ahead. Before the Olympics, and then the Paralympics, we have dozens of World Cup competitions, and new opportunities to write iconic moments into this history of British snowsport. We have the chance to open up more spots at the Games next year. And we have the chance to show, again, that Britain has become one of the most compelling stories in world class snowsport.

Six months from now, there won’t be time to look back. We’ll be fully focussed on the task at hand, and working to ensure the athletes that travel to Milan-Cortina are able to return with success under their belts. But in the years to come, when there’ll hopefully have been more success to reflect on, we’ll know the work we put in now played its part in another chapter of British achievements on snow.

For now, then, we look forward with excitement. But only for a moment. There’s work to do, and we won’t let anything take our eyes off the prize.