GB hope for historic snowsport Winter Olympics

Great Britain's freestyle snowsports team are targeting up to three medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Considering team GB has never won a single Olympic medal on the snow it is an astonishing claim.

But Pat Sharples, team GB head coach, is confident recent results in slopestyle, an event making its Games debut in Russia, suggests they can make history.

“I skied for four years without getting on the snow, I loved it and it was what I needed”

Sharples' confidence is backed up by the performances of Billy Morgan and James Woods. Woods. Morgan was victorious at the London Freeze big air event last weekend. Woods won a World Cup event in September, the first British man to do so.

Throw into the mix snowboard cross rider Zoe Gillings, who has had seven World Cup podiums, including a win and snowboarder Jenny Jones, who has three slopestyle X Games golds to her name, and you can understand why Sharples has made the claim.

After disappointing performances at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 UK Sport removed funding for all skiing and snowboarding athletes.

However after a string of top results in world-class events, it has agreed to provide £584,300 worth of support for freestyle skiing and snowboarding through to 2013.

Although grateful for the financial assistance, skiing and snowboarding is still the poorest funded of all the British Summer and Winter Olympic sports, and alpine skiing receives no help at all.

"We don't always have to be on the slope and a lot of the guys have come through learning on dry slopes and indoor centres," Sharples told BBC Sport.

"They have become so good on the rails and boxes because in these artificial centres they're playing around on them and learning new tricks constantly.

Woods added: "I skied for four years without getting on the snow, I loved it and it was what I needed."

"In Britain we're deprived of the mountains and the skiing mentality, it's not a way of life and it's very much considered what you do when you're loaded.

"I've had jobs back in Sheffield and some of the guys even now are working all through the summer so they can get a month away and strive for the Olympics.

"Everyone on our team, we've done our fair share of sleeping on floors and and not eating so much so we can afford the lift pass," said Woods. "I'm not telling a sob story - it's fantastic because it shows the passion and how much we all want it."

GB freestyle funded athletes:

Podium squad:

•Jenny Jones (snowboard slopestyle)

•Zoe Gillings (snowboard X)

•James Woods (ski slopestyle)

Development squad:

•Aimee Fuller (snowboard slopestyle)

•Ben Kilner (snowboard half-pipe)

•Billy Morgan (snowboard slopestyle)

•Jamie Nicholls (snowboard slopestyle)
•Katie Summerhayes (ski slopestyle)