From Team Bath: Thirteen bobsleigh and skeleton athletes who train at the University of Bath have today been selected to represent Team GB at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy.
Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt, the only athletes to win gold on this season’s IBSF World Cup circuit, will go in the men’s skeleton, while GB has three Olympic debutants in the women’s skeleton – Amelia Coltman, Tabby Stoecker and Freya Tarbit.
All five will be eligible for selection in the mixed team race, with GB qualifying two teams in a discipline that makes its Olympic debut this year. The crews will be confirmed after the conclusion of the individual races.
Brad Hall, the most successful men’s World Cup pilot in British history, will lead Team GB in the men’s bobsleigh for a third successive Games and is joined in the four-man crew by fellow Olympians Greg Cackett and Taylor Lawrence, plus debutant Leon Greenwood. Alex Cartagena is the travelling reserve. Hall and Lawrence will also contest the two-man.
Adelé Nicoll, a travelling reserve in 2022, makes her Olympic bow in both the monobob and two-woman bobsleigh. Selected alongside her in the latter is Ashleigh Nelson, who will join a select group of athletes to represent Team GB at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Kya Placide completes the women’s squad as the travelling reserve.
The Olympic-bound athletes today returned to their University of Bath training base, a UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centre and home to the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association (BBSA), to collect their official Team GB kit and speak to the assembled media.
They don’t have long to wait until the Games begin, with the opening ceremony taking place on Friday 6th February and skeleton racing getting under way on Thursday 12th February.
First up will be Weston and Wyatt, gold and silver medallists respectively at last year’s World Championships. They have continued that form into the 2025-26 season, Weston bagging five gold medals from seven World Cup races and only being denied victory in the other two by team-mate Wyatt.
Stoecker heads to her first Games off the back of an excellent third-place finish in the women’s Overall World Cup rankings, while fellow Olympic debutants Coltman and Tarbit ensured GB were one of only two nations to secure the three maximum qualifying places available per gender by placing 10th and 11th respectively in the final standings.
After an Olympiad where they have enjoyed historic World Championships and World Cup success, it has been a challenging season for Team Hall following the pre-Christmas injury absence of experienced brakeman Lawrence. However, they still finished fourth – making them the highest ranked non-German crew – in both the Overall World Cup four-man and combined standings.
Between successful bobsleigh seasons, 2025 also saw Nicoll claim her third British shot put title. Women’s team-mate Nelson, who switched to bobsleigh just last year, also has a track and field background having sprinted for Team GB at the Beijing 2008 and Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
The University of Bath is home to the UK’s only outdoor push-start track, where bobsleigh and skeleton athletes finetune the all-important start during pre-season before transferring those skills to ice. Athletes have won medals at all but one of the Winter Olympic Games staged since the facility opened in 2002 – a magnificent total of eight between them.
Seven of those have come in skeleton, including three successive women’s gold medals for University of Bath graduate Amy Williams (Vancouver 2010) and Lizzy Yarnold (Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018), both of whom were back at the University for today’s kitting out and team announcement. Bobsleigh athletes have also enjoyed Olympic success, with the four-man crew of John Jackson, Stuart Benson, Bruce Tasker and Joel Fearon claiming bronze at Sochi 2014.
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