New Torvill and Dean anyone?

Winter Olympics anyone? For those old enough to remember and romantic British Ice Skating fans there will only ever be two names worth mentioning, Torvill and Dean. The pair that spun and waltzed on ice so memorably to Bolero picking up the seemingly impossible 12 perfect 6's leaving the British public in awe and celebrating that rarest of rarities, a British Gold medal in the Winter Olympics.
Vancouver 2010 promises to be a whole lot different, more medals, more close shaves, mor people at home not giving a monkey's about a load of kids on wheel free skateboards and more lycra than at a Tory S and M party. Medals and more is what we want buthow about the chances?
A whopping 26years of, well nothing much happening at all as far as British frozen sport is concerned. Since T and D slid to Gold the only other victory has come in 2002 - womens team Curling. The show stopping event/sport that is a mixture of bowling and shuffleboard as millions of us became glued to the box for a few days as Rhona Martin and her Scottish housewives took to cleaning, I mean Curling the ice better than a load of Canadians or Russians could polish it.
What does two and a half weeks of Olympic sport have to grab the public starting on Feb 12th? What is there to get us excited about? A promised three medals from Olympic chiefs is what they reckon. £6.5m of spending to pay for extra tight thermals and a spare pair of salopettes seems quite a lot to me.
However, look a bit closer and for once the boys and girls from Essex, the Home Counties and North of the Border have got something to prove. Somehow Britain are to be ranked in the top 12 nations competing! Not bad for a non-alpine Island, even better when you consider there will be over 50 of us flying the flag in -25Canadian degrees. Not bad at all for a country that stands still at the first sign of a blizzard, let alone compete in it.
So where is the focus of attention going to be for the truly mad sports fan tuning into Eurosport's religious coverage or BBC2 when they can be bothered? Forget downhill, slalom, giant slalom or any other take on getting down a hill as quickly as possible with falling over - Almost guaranteed is a Brit no show on the podium.
Instead, i'll be tuned in to the one Winter sport 'we' excel at - Skeleton or 'Tea Tray' as its more affectionately known. The one sport where Britain has never failed to take a medal including the sole medal in 2006 from Shelley Rudman's skeleton silver. Last year Britain had two World silver medallists with Shelley finishing in the top four in every event but one last year and Amy Williams also a consistent top performer, a 1-2 is surely not entirely out of the question.
You may not care now, as I don't really, but come the middle of Feb as another dark night settles down over your Coronation Street gloom and you flick through the channels to two girls in skin tight outfits flying down a piece of ice at up to 140km/h you might get a prick of interest. A sport designed for kamikaze pilots, agile athletes and superheroes has been taken over by the Brits in crash helmets with Lion hearts and fast legs.

Sprinting, sliding, crashing, splitting and dealing with up to 5G's of pressure is all part of the game when deciding who comes out on top. For once, lets get all Arctic and follow the girls down the ice with a bit of passion and hopefully in a month's time we will be celebrating Great Britain's best ever Winter Olympic Medal haul with thanks to Curlers, Bobsleigh and lots of lovely girls on their skeletons!