After Olympic glory
How many Brits are turning to snow sports after the Winter Olympics
Once the gold medals are handed out, and the closing ceremony finishes, what does become of the Winter Olympics?
Many people take to the rinks and slopes of England, hoping to catch the same buzz they did watching it. Many fall in love with it. Last year alone, nearly 230,000 people participated in some sort of winter sport, according to Sports England in their study.
Grab your skates and mittens as I meet 3 individuals after their own version of the Olympic dream.
Guy Topping
Guy Topping joins me in an online interview. He’s quiet, soft-spoken, and says a gentle hello. After couple of awkward shuffles, we start.
The 60-year-old found his love of curling as a child.
“I went up to Abbeymore in Scotland when I was a kid as a holiday, and they had a curling rink there. I was quite intrigued about the sport.”
“And then I remember watching Rona Martin when she won the gold medal in the Olympics in 2002,” he added with a smile.
The rest was history. A curling rink was built in Preston, and along with it came Preston Curling Club and Guy.
The game heats up on the ice with Preston Curling Club and Dumfries Curling (credit: Paddy Szalbierz)
Guy also added, rather nonchalantly, that he represented senior division England at the 2024 Curling World Championships in Osterund, Sweden.
“So, it’s a really nice place on a lake and it happens in April. So, the lake is still frozen at the time and most of the athletes stay in one hotel.”
“We were all in there. You’re in the bar every night and you’re mixing with all the other teams from all around the world and some of the media.”
Guy says it’s no coincidence that his curling sales are up 50% up since February; Olympics fans are taking to the ice to give it a go.
Curling brooms at the ready for players at the Preston Flowerbowl (credit: Paddy Szalbierz)
“It’s been a big increase in the number of people coming and having a curling club, and I also run the curling club, and we’ve had probably about a dozen new members since the Olympics.”
Allison Whyte
The rumbling of curling stones and the occasional squeak of a rubber-soled shoe fill the Preston Flowerbowl curling rink.
Allison Whyte surveys the ice. She has just finished a friendly against Preston, playing for Dumfries ladies.
On the ice, she seemed authoritative and focused. Off the ice, she’s warm and smiling, speaking in a gentle Scottish accent. She’s been laughing with her teammates all game.
Allison enjoys curling for its social aspect (credit: Paddy Szalbierz)
“They’re all friendly. We don’t take it seriously. We enjoy it,” Allison laughs.
“We have a wee chat between stones. We’re probably not your ideal players because we’re too busy watching everything else. It’s friendship.”
That much was clear. Even between the rival teams there were smiles.
I ask Allison whether she has any grand ambitions for the sport, like Guy, any championships in her sight. She looks at me like she’s about to burst out laughing.
“We go out and have fun. We do want to play good shots, but we don’t always do it,” she shrugs.
She also tells me of the regional difference in curling, and how living north of that English border makes a title fight far more difficult.
“It’s harder in Scotland to get to your championships because you’ve got the seniors who were good in juniors and won all the juniors, then won the adults and now winning the seniors.”
“Someone coming in like me really has no chance in Scotland.”
A busy locker room for a busy day at the Flower Bowl (credit: Paddy Szalbierz)
Allison on the ice (credit: Paddy Szalbierz)
But she keeps smiling with her team.
“Come and have a shot!” she says, “You can play with a stick, so you don’t have to bend down. Here you can just chuck it from the back, throw it!”
She asks me whether I’d like a go. I think I’ll leave it to the professionals; I’ve never been good with ice.
Louise Walden
It’s 2010. Two figures whizz past you on the ice, cutting a beautiful line as they twirl. You’re looking at Louise Walden and Owen Edwards, skating their British Championship winning performance.
I had listened to Louise’s voice at full blast from my TV just a couple months prior to this interview, sitting on my sofa watching the Winter Olympics. She had been commentating the ice-skating rounds.
Now here she was, with her award-winning smile, talking to me.
“I fell in love with skating at the age of 10, which is quite late to take up a new hobby and want to chase an Olympic dream,” she said.
“And what did it for me was really the feeling that I got when I was on the ice. I just felt so free and so fast.”
Louise began skating in an Olympic year, in 1994, and said her parents would have to try catch her to get her off the ice; she always knew she’d get far.
“I had this relentless, very strange and unexpected, relentless belief in making it big in ice skating.”
She was right. She’s warm and bubbly while speaking to me, and I feel I’m there with her. The training, the travel, the pressure and the atmosphere of the biggest event in winter sports.
“The athletes are training their whole lives to maybe make it once.”
“And then when you’ve made it once, you’re training for the next four years to maybe make it again.”
Louise never attended the Olympics as a skater. She said, as much as she would have been disappointed as a young skater, she is beyond proud of her achievements.
She sits there, with a soft smile, “I’m living my own Olympic dream in a different way now. Not the one I thought I was going to live, ironically.”
Tears pricked up in her eyes once I asked her about what advice she would give a little girl like herself.
“Dream big, work hard, keep going, and be kind always.”
“Don’t let anybody tell you, you can’t do anything, because I did not come from a wealthy family or a background. Sport is expensive. But I was a little girl with a big dream,” she sniffled.
The Winter Olympic rush has ended for another 4 years. In the meantime, why not try your luck on the ice? You might just find your passion.
