Britain’s success in winter sport is remarkable given our climate – we must treasure our rinks
The Princess of Wales on a visit to the National Curling Academy in January 2026 (Associated Press / Alamy)
4 min read
Winter sports are cooler than ever, but for potential enthusiasts the ability to participate in them is still all too often a hot topic.
Not long after I was elected to Stirling Council and given the sport and culture portfolio, I started to receive intense lobbying from ice skaters and curlers regarding access to the council owned ice rink.
Both parties were deeply unhappy at what they perceived as an unfair distribution of ice time. I then set out to learn more than I needed to about the key differences in the ice requirements for both sports (for skating it needs to be like glass; for curling, it needs to be slightly uneven) and the maintenance schedule of the one ice resurfacing machine that the council owned.
The tension eased somewhat in 2017 when the National Curling Academy opened in my constituency. Team GB’s Olympic and Paralympic curling teams are now based there, with year round access to world class facilities. The results speak for themselves.
Bruce Mouat has skipped his team to two World Championship titles, four European titles, twelve Grand Slam titles and Olympic silver. Eve Muirhead led her team to a World Championship, three European Championships, Olympic bronze in Sochi and gold in Beijing.
Britain is also a world leader in skeleton. Yet our elite athletes do not have a full track in this country. The University of Bath has a 140 metre push start facility, but our athletes must travel abroad to train on ice.
2026 was our most successful Olympics ever. Five medals, three of them gold, including our first ever medal on snow rather than ice.
The margins in winter sport are incredibly fine. Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson narrowly missed out in the ice dance. Kirsty Muir was just 0.41 points away from bronze in freestyle skiing. Britain’s four-man bobsleigh team came agonisingly close after winning silver at the World Championships in 2023.
Without ice rinks there is simply no pathway into many winter sports
Team GB is approaching 1000 medals at the Summer Games, compared with just 39 at the Winter Olympics. Yet winter sport moments are disproportionately etched on our national sporting psyche.
It might be Rhona Martin delivering the famous “stone of destiny” in 2002. It might be Lizzy Yarnold defending her skeleton title in Pyeongchang. Most likely it is Torvill and Dean skating Bolero to perfection in Sarajevo in 1984.
But behind those moments lies a difficult policy challenge. The UK has far less natural snow and ice than we often imagine, and the facilities that support winter sport are limited. There are fewer than 60 permanent ice rinks across the country, unevenly distributed and expensive to run. Keeping ice frozen requires large amounts of energy, and rising costs in recent years have pushed up ticket prices while placing increasing pressure on councils and operators. When budgets tighten, rinks can quickly look like an unaffordable luxury.
Yet without ice rinks there is simply no pathway into many winter sports.
UK Sport has invested around £32 million in winter sports in the current Olympic cycle, supporting elite athletes and coaching programmes. That investment is welcome.
But medals won on the Olympic stage begin much earlier in community rinks and volunteer run clubs.
In Stirling we see that clearly. Every time our elite curlers succeed internationally there is a noticeable surge in interest at local Come and Try Curling sessions. Facilities create opportunity. Nationally, that opportunity is already shaped too heavily by geography and risks becoming increasingly determined by income.
Britain’s success in winter sport is remarkable given our climate and geography. But it is not accidental. It is built on investment, smart coaching and access to facilities.
If we want future generations to experience their own iconic Olympic moments, we must make sure winter sport remains available to all. That means recognising ice rinks and wider facilities not as expensive luxuries, but as an essential part of the sporting infrastructure with opportunity open to everyone.
Chris Kane is the Labour MP for Stirling and Strathallan
