James Woods is currently leading the ski slopestyle World Cup standings having won two out of two World Cups/Olympic Qualifiers so far this season. Billy Morgan and Jenny Jones made their mark in the recent World Snowboard Slopestyle Championships in Canada with a fourth and sixth place finish respectively.

Last week Shelley Rudman became the first British female to be crowned skeleton world champion. Shelley, a two time Olympian with a silver medal from the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics, was also the 2012 overall World Cup skeleton champion. Lizzy Yarnold won silver at the World Cup in Park City earlier this season and finished fourth, just 0.13 shy of a podium place, at the 2013 skeleton World Champs.

The men's curling team is currently the second best in the world and the women are ranked seventh but came away with a silver medal at the 2012 European Championships. In the four man bobsleigh, Olympian John Jackson is currently ranked seventh in the world, with snowboarder Zoe Gillings, who made her Olympic debut in Turin 2006, ranked eighth in the world. Cross country skier and Olympian Andrew Musgrave has had a promising season so far and he continues his good form following his ninth place finish in the Tour de Ski sprint, in a field that included the powerhouses of Norway, Sweden and Germany.

Our ice dancers Penny Coobes and Nick Buckland finished a creditable fifth in the recent European Figure Skating Championships in Croatia.

The GB ice hockey team has the chance to qualify for Sochi if they win the Olympic Qualification Tournament that takes starts today in Latvia. This would be the first time in over 60 years that Team GB would have an ice hockey team at the Olympic Winter Games - the last appearance was in 1948.


The Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games project is a colossal one: more than 800 venues are being built for the Games. A new railway, three new highways and eight new road junctions are also being built. The main route between the coast and the mountain cluster is 47 kilometres long, with 30km of them underground.

But the infrastructure won't be the only new thing in Sochi. We will also see events that will be part of the Winter Olympics for the first time: men's and women's ski halfpipe, women's ski jumping, biathlon mixed relay, figure skating team event and luge team relay. Several of our athletes have already competed at the venues when taking part in the test events which Sochi 2014 has put on and the feedback has been good.

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics will be the first Winter Games to have an Olympic Park. In the past only Summer Olympics have had this feature. The Park will be able to accommodate approximately 70,000 people and includes a plaza at which all athletes will receive their medals. This will also be the first time the Winter Games are being held in Russia, which is remarkable given the tradition of Olympic success and support for winter sport in Russia.


The Sochi venue concept is compact: at the last two Winter Olympics, it took hours to get from the venues based in the city to the mountains. In Sochi, travelling from the costal cluster – where the Olympic Park will host curling, short track, figure and speed skating, ice hockey and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies – to the mountain cluster will take less than 30 minutes on the new railway.

The mountain cluster will include biathlon and ski complexes, a bobsleigh track, a ski centre, a ski jump complex, as well as a (snowboard) park and freestyle centre. The Park concept and the proximity of the mountains at these Winter Games means that spectators and athletes, once they have finished competing, will be able to consume and enjoy more sport with less travel time between venues.

At the British Olympic Association (BOA), we live by the mantra "Better Never Stops". This is why we will capitalise on all of our learning's from the London 2012 Olympics and Vancouver 2010 to leave no stone unturned to make sure Team GB athletes have the resources and support they need to perform to the very best of their ability at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

Andy Hunt is the chief executive of the British Olympic Association (BOA).