Weston gets his 1st Olympic skeleton gold medal, in race where Heraskevych was DQ'ed before start

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Matt Weston doesn't always win. It only seems that way.

And at the Milan Cortina Olympics, the 28-year-old slider from Britain left no doubt — he's the best skeleton racer in the world.

Capping a four-year run that featured one remarkable finish after another, Weston won the men's skeleton gold medal on a frosty Friday night in Cortina d'Ampezzo. He finished four runs over two days in 3 minutes, 43.33 seconds, posting a track-record time in all four of those heats and building an almost-insurmountable lead going into a final slide that became a victory lap.

He broke into tears when it was over, then hugged one of his coaches — Latvian great Martins Dukurs, the 2014 Olympic champion. Dukurs was long considered the world's best; that title now belongs to Weston.

''I expect every time I stand at the top of the start line, I'm going there for one reason and one reason only," Weston said. "And that's to win.''

Ukraine's Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from the event before it started because of his insistence on wearing a helmet that paid tribute to more than 20 coaches and athletes from his country who were killed following Russia's invasion four years ago. Heraskevych got the ruling that he couldn't race Thursday, about 45 minutes before the start of the competition, then had his appeal denied by the Court of Arbitration for Sport after a hearing in Milan on Friday.

Had he raced, Heraskevych might have been a medal contender. But beating Weston would have been an extremely tall task.

For the U.S., Austin Florian was 12th and Dan Barefoot was 20th. Florian will race for the U.S. in the mixed skeleton event on Sunday; he and Mystique Ro are the reigning world champions in that competition.

Weston was 15th at the 2022 Beijing Olympics — and has been the dominant force in men's skeleton ever since. Before this week, he had 34 races at the World Cup or world championship level since those Beijing Games.

He medaled in 28 of them, winning 15 times. Put another way, he has been no worse than third in 82% of those races and finished first 54% of the time.

It's absolute dominance.

''I think I'm a massive perfectionist," Weston said. ''That kind of manifests itself in a lot of ways in my life. But in skeleton, sometimes when I win, I'm annoyed because I haven't won correctly.''

Weston becomes Britain's third skeleton gold medalist: Amy Williams won at the 2010 Vancouver Games, then Lizzy Yarnold went back-to-back in 2014 and 2018.

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