Who is Matt Weston? Skeleton star who broke his back as a teenager bids for Winter Olympics history

Matt Weston won Team GB’s first medal of this Winter Olympics with a peerless performance in the men’s skeleton on Friday night, and now has the chance to make history by adding his second medal of the games in the mixed event on Sunday.

Weston broke the track record in all four of his heats in Cortina d’Ampezzo and was utterly imperious, only getting better with each run, and withstood all the pressure as the overwhelming favourite to claim his first Olympic medal.

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The 29-year-old is the reigning world and World Cup champion, having won five of the seven races on the World Cup circuit this season. The remaining two were won by his teammate Marcus Wyatt, another medal contender.

Weston is a two-time world champion in the individual event, having won it first in 2023 before reclaiming the title in 2025, and a three-time world silver medallist in the mixed event, where he will compete alongside Tabby Stoecker in Cortina.

In skeleton, Weston is also a double European champion - in 2023 and 2026 - and three-time overall World Cup winner, the first British man to win it three times. But he has also competed to a high level in two other sports.

As a youngster the Tunbridge Wells native competed in taekwondo at a national and European level, winning international honours for England, before a stress fracture in his back at the age of 17 forced him to retire from the sport.

At the same time, he was also an excellent rugby player, playing for Kent and Sevenoaks RFC as well as a Saracens Academy college.

In 2017 his weightlifting coach suggest he enter a UK Sport talent identification programme called Discover Your Gold, which was the first time he encountered skeleton.

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He trained with the Royal Marines during his transition into the sport and first competed in 2019, winning two Europa Cup titles - the second tier of skeleton - in his first three races.

He won his first World Cup medal, a silver, in Innsbruck in 2020, on his fifth start on the elite circuit. Gold followed in November 2021 - GB’s first World Cup gold in 14 years.

But he endured disappointment in his first Olympics, in Beijing in 2022, when he finished 15th and reportedly considered quitting the sport after GB won no skeleton medals for the first time since it featured in a Games.

However he continued to compete and was rewarded with his first world title in 2023, when he became Britain’s first skeleton world champion since Kristan Bromley in 2008, and he has since become a hugely dominant force on the World Cup circuit.

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In January this year he won his second overall World Cup title and he is already Britain’s most decorated slider at world championship level; now he has added Olympic glory to his already glittering resume and has the chance to make British Olympic history by becoming the first athlete to win two gold medals at the same Winter Games.

“I think doing the individual is one thing, it’s an amazing position to be in, the fact that I’m here with a gold medal in front of me on the table, it feels absolutely amazing,” Weston said. “But the chance to be a double Olympic champion – I think we do have a pretty good chance as well.

“The girls are some extremely fast starters, so that really, really helps in the team event. I think we’re going to be one of the strongest set of teams out there, and I think we can definitely take it to the rest of the nations, and hopefully come back with a few more bits of bling.”

After sealing individual gold, Weston’s post-race celebrations were limited to three slices of margherita pizza in the food hall at the athletes village, but his medal has been safely stowed away and he reports it to be fully intact after some athletes reported issues with theirs detaching from the ribbon.

“I’ve got a drawer next to my bed, I kind of tucked it in there very safe, and then as soon as I woke up this morning I was like, ‘It’s still there? Is it a dream?’.

“I very quickly had a little look at it and made sure it was still there, but it’s been living inside a sock for the past couple of hours, because I haven’t got the box yet from the medal ceremony, so I’m keeping it in a sock to try to keep it as fresh as possible.

“I’m terrified of it falling off the end of the ribbon like I’ve seen some people, so I’m like cradling it half the time, it’s like my little baby, but it’s amazing, I love it.”