Team GB's athletes have been set an ambitious medals target for Sochi ©Getty Images



The target is three to seven medals, GB's biggest Winter Olympics haul since 1936. Yet curiously among the hi-tech backing group there is no mention of a psychologist; odd that as most self-respecting sports units seem to feel they can't do without a drop of couch coaching these days.

But team leader Mike Hay tells us: "We feel most of the sports will have completed this sort of preparation before they leave."

Maybe the BOA were mindful of the situation I quoted when, during the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, GB's four-man bob were sensationally in pole position after the first run, only to finish sixth after being locked overnight 'in the zone' with their psychologist...

Hopes for Sochi are higher than they have ever been, though such is this Cold War arms race Team GB would need nuclear weapons to break into the top 10 of Winter Games nations. In Vancouver they were 19th.

However for a nation which has always preferred contact with ice to be confined to the tinkling of cubes in a glass, the opening of the 22nd Winter Olympics on Friday February 7 and the ensuing fortnight may offer just a little more than the usual cold comfort.

Selling the downhill has always been an uphill battle in Britain, though interest in winter pursuits has been somewhat defrosted by Torvill and Dean, John Curry and Robin Cousins giving us a twirl, by Rhona Martin's curlers, who turned stones into gold 12 years ago and the bubbly Bath ex-hurdler Amy Williams sliding to glory on her beloved skeleton bone-shaker 'Arthur' in Vancouver.

Rhona Martin led Britain's curlers to Olympic glory in Salt Lake City 2002 ©Getty Images



That UK Sport target of three to seven medals may seem ambitious, but in fact on current form it seems realistic enough. Hopes are reassuringly bright, with Lizzy Yarnold, this season's World Cup leader - she won her fourth event in Austria last week - and world champion and Turin Olympics silver medallist Shelley Rudman ranked one and three in the women's skeleton while short track speed skater Elise Christie, a world bronze medallist and now double European champion in the women's 1,000m, has her chances boosted by the likely absence of China's world and Olympic champion Wang Meng with a broken ankle.

The men's and women's curlers, skier James Woods, snowboarder Jenny Jones and, here's a surprise, cross country skier Andrew Musgrave are all genuine podium contenders. Musgrave's astonishing win in the Norwegian Championships at the weekend was surely the equivalent of a Scandinavian scoring a century in a Test Match.

Rudman's partner, Kristan Bromley, the intrepid madcap boffin, a former world champion is now running into form in the men's skeleton and T&D's current ice dance successors, Nick Buckland and Penny Coomes have just acquired a bronze medal in the European Championships.

Actually single-figure placings in any discipline would be an achievement.

It may have been forgotten that the intrepid Nash and Dixon had a bobsleigh gold back in 1964 and the curling triumph in Salt Lake City was accompanied by Alex Coomber bobbing to bronze.

Few will also recall that Britain actually won the ice-hockey gold medal in 1936. More likely to be remembered is how The Eagle dared in Calgary 26 years ago and the world chuckled at Eddie Edwards as a True Brit and not just a buffoon with bottle.

British ski jumper Eddie Edwards, often referred to as Eddie the Eagle, was the ultimate underdog in Calgary 1988 ©Getty Images



Despite sporadic excursions by Ski Sunday the seasonal chilblain-inducing antics of winter sportsfolk have been left mainly for Eurosport's anoraks to savour, but now those activities which normally would be watched by one man and his St Bernard suddenly become global fantasies as viewers mug up on oddball antics such as moguls, half-pipes, two-man luge, giant slalom and Nordic combined and nod knowingly as instant experts in furry ear-muffs debate the finer points of langlauf (cross country skiing).

Indeed, there seems little that cannot be done on snow and ice these days, from ballet to bowling. How long, we wonder before team snowball fighting becomes an Olympic event?

At least the BOA now takes winter sports as seriously as those in the summer Games, preparing competitors with a thoroughness that is even the envy of some Alpine and North American nations. The days are gone when these Olympics, less than a third the size of the summer Games, were strictly for the teeth-chattering classes.

What happens when Sochi 2014 gets under way is unlikely to dominate the February footy, comprehensive as the BBC's coverage will be, but for some it will be compelling viewing - millions stayed up to the early hours to watch Martin and her magic broomstick sweep to glory in Salt Lake City.

Actually, 21 Winter Olympics medals (eight golds, three silvers and ten bronze) overall passes reasonable muster for a lowland nation which grinds to a halt every time Railtrack's points are dusted with a snowflake or two.

And there would have been 22 had the skier Alain Baxter not inhaled from a tube of Vicks back in Salt Lake City 12 years ago. In Sochi, we must hope any sniffing is not from a cold, but the scent of gold.

For many years, Britain's traditional role has been a lifetime's subscription to the Baron de Coubertin philosophy of taking part. Now, flushed with the lingering feel good factor of 2012, UK Sport  have splashed out some £14 million via the Lottery on domestic dry runs and overseas preparations in anticipation of GB's best all-round Winter Games performance in over three quarters of a century.

Yet it is charming idiosyncrasy of British sport that our outstanding chances of gold come in curling, a sort of refrigerated bowls, and from fast young ladies insanely hurling themselves down the helter-skelter ice tubes.

Sochi, host to the world's most expensive and fiercely-debated Olympics ever,  may be beset by intense security worries, political hot potatoes and a balmy climate currently more akin to the French Riviera.

Yet the snow show must go on. The quadrennial cavalcade of swooshing, slipping and sliding is almost upon us, but there's many a slip between piste and podium. So let's get ready to tumble.

And for GB's sake hope that those dreams of a winter of content are not all in the mind.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for the The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.