Winter Olympics: Who to look out for from the south of England?

The 25th Winter Olympics is here and excitement is building for Team GB's athletes, with many of them coming from the south of England.

The retired double skeleton champion Lizzie Yarnold is predicting a record medal haul in Italy with GB expected to exceed its best performance of five medals in Sochi in 2014.

"I think we're going to beat it," said the 37-year-old, who lives in Hampshire and will be in Cortina for the games.

Speaking to BBC Radio Solent, she said "every event is going to be unique and fabulous in its own way" and "the Team GB hopes are really exciting".

The two-times gold medalist said the lack of access to snow and ice training locations in the UK only made GB's athletes more determined.

She said: "We focus really hard and train hard because we don't have access to the tracks and the slopes as much as other athletes.

"It's this amazing British grit in believing in ourselves, training hard and having great coaches."

Laurie Taylor, 29, has had to wait eight years between Olympic Games appearances, having debuted in PyeongChang in 2018, where he finished 26th in Men's Slalom and helped the team to a fifth-place finish.

He was born in Basingstoke and learned to ski on a family holiday aged six, before he soon joined the Aldershot Ski race team aged nine and began racing on dry slopes.

He was invited to join the British Ski Academy (BSA) and has spent 10 years living and training in France, while also having a stint in New Zealand.

It has not been an easy journey for Taylor who had to work hard to help fund his training - washing pots in the BSA kitchen, tuning skis and working at a ski shop in Queenstown, however his hard work has paid off and he started this Olympic season with a best-ever fourth place World Cup finish.

He will be in action in the Men's Team Combined Slalom on 9 February and the Men's Slalom Run on 16 February.

Serving Royal Marine Taylor Lawrence will be reporting for duty for Team GB in the four-man and two-man bobsleigh on the 16, 17, 21 and 22 February.

The 29-year-old, based in Berkshire and originally from Kent, missed most of the 2025-26 season with a calf injury but has now returned to full-fitness.

He is on a full-time sports contract with the marines and will be hoping to improve on his sixth place finish in the four-man bobsleigh in Beijing 2022.

Last year he picked up two Bronze medals in the 2025 World Cup Series in two and four-man events.

Fellow bobsleigh teammate Leon Greenwood will be in action in the four-man event on 21 and 22 February.

Greenwood from West Yorkshire, now lives in Newbury and joined the British Bobsleigh programme in the summer of 2022 and has gone on to medal for the GB1 team on the World Cup circuit and compete at the World Championships.

He is no stranger to pressures of international sport having previously competed in athletics, achieving success as the Welsh 200m Champion and a British Indoor Championships finalist, he is now is a volunteer coach at Newbury Athletics Club.

Andrew Musgrave is originally from Poole but has gone on to live in Scotland before settling in Norway.

The cross-country skier brings a wealth of experience to Milan Cortina having made his Olympic debut in Vancouver 2010.

The 35-year-old will be hitting the slopes on 8 February in the Men's 10km + 10km Skiathlon, where he will be hoping to improve on his best finish at a games, which was seventh in the 30km skiathlon in 2018.

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