The banned ‘space age’ helmet, an Olympic gold medal and £6m of taxpayer money ...Middle East

BORMIO — There is technically only one way to win a gold medal in skeleton: cross the line is the shortest time possible.

But for the British team, there are 5.8 million reasons they are favourites to win gold in the men’s event – or at least, there were, until someone from the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) got their rulebook out and a row erupted on the eve of the Olympics.

After an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), Team GB has run out of options and will have to bin their controversial new helmet for their Olympic campaign.

The helmet in question is a remarkable looking piece of kit. Skeleton helmets are fairly straightforward. If someone arrived at your house on a Vespa wearing one, you would think nothing was out of the ordinary. But this one looks like something a track cyclist might wear, or a space age cartoon character.

Reigning Women’s Skeleton World Champion @kimberleyb0s breaks down the Olympic track in Cortina From tricky corners to Olympic history—discover how this redeveloped track echoes the legendary 1956 venue #SlideToShine #MilanoCortina2026 #Olympics pic.twitter.com/B1Iz0jR53q

It was developed in a bespoke wind tunnel in Manchester, a process inspired by the Formula One design process, the only mainstream sport where aerodynamicists are celebrities and the subject of transfer rumours galore.

‘Disappointed’ leadership bullish on chances

There would have been high fives and fist pumps when the new piece of kit started producing results – but despite being denied a victory on the eve of competition, the Brits remain bullish.

“This does not affect our final preparations and nor has the discourse affected the athletes’ focus or optimism going into the Games,” said “disappointed” Natalie Dunman, the skelton and bobsleigh unit’s Olympic team leader.

“Our athletes have been winning medals all season and throughout the Olympic cycle in their current helmets and we remain in a strong position to continue that trend.”

It’s true that Britain has been dominating the World Cup circuit with their old helmet: a British rider, Marcus Wyatt or Matt Weston, has won every single men’s event this season, the team has won two of the four mixed ones and Tabitha Stoecker has been a regular on the podium in the women’s races, finishing third in the standings overall.

Skeleton star helps drive innovation

Weston is the best of all, winning five of the seven meets, and is the reigning European and world champion. He is by far Britain’s best shot of Olympic gold. They’ve arguably never had a hotter favourite.

And the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association (BBSA) tech nerds have a great ally on the track in Weston, a self-confessed petrolhead who regards himself as “his own mechanic” on the road.

“That kind of mechanical mind links very well with me being a petrol head to kind of helping to produce new and faster equipment and to optimise it,” Weston told The i Paper back in January.

Since arriving in Italy, he has played down talk of the lawsuit being a distraction but there is little doubt he will be gutted not to be wearing something so revolutionary.

New kit will appear in other teams

Weston may well be worried too. Everyone saves their best kit in this extremely technology-sensitive sport for the Olympics: at both 2010 and 2018, British sliders faced questions from rivals about their race suits. The Germans, Weston’s biggest rivals, have a research and development programme to rival the Brits, and it would be no surprise to see them unveiling new equipment in Cortina.

That’s why Great Britain’s £5.8m skeleton programme had only run their new safety helmet in training in St Moritz last week, clearly with some positive results given the intention to use it at the Olympic Games. They thought they had been given the nod by skeleton bigwigs at a secret meeting in Germany on 1 January but CAS decided that had only been an “informal” chat, with no binding effect.

Later emails from the IBSF show they believe the new helmet breaks a rule which says they may not include “spoilers or protruding edges”. The Brits say theirs does not, because its teardrop shape “has been manufactured as one solid form”. On such semantic arguments can gold medals, and millions of pounds of funding, be won and lost.

And the bar is outrageously high for skeleton. Their £6m of funding is under constant scrutiny, because it is so removed from British life. There is a 140m push track in Bath for practising starts, and they have retrofitted an old flight simulator to allow riders to train on tracks in the lab, but this is a sport impossible for British kids to compete in without going overseas.

A life-threatening sport, it fights for its life in Britain every four years. Gold feels like the only salvation.

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