From Mia Brookes to Dave Ryding: Five GB winter sport stars to watch ahead of Milano Cortina 2026
The sun has set on Paris 2024 but with the snow now falling across the Alps and beyond, the countdown to Milano Cortina 2026 continues.
For British hopefuls, that means taking part in events around the globe - where there is snow, or in the case of three GB athletes below: ice.
One Olympic hopeful for 2026 is still in rehab after a horrific injury last season, but still there are plenty of names to keep an eye out for in the weeks and months ahead, with some World Cup campaigns already underway – and World Championships around the corner.
Dave Ryding
Dave Ryding, aka “The Rocket”, is Britain’s most successful alpine skier and has no plans to stop despite entering veteran territory – in the sporting world, that is – at 37 years old.
Four Winter Olympics down, he plans to make it five in 2026, having said last year he will continue to compete “until the legs fall off”.
That was after some hesitation over whether he could handle another four-year Olympic cycle, but ahead of his 16th World Cup season, Ryding has said he is now over the “hump”.
"I've done two years, it's actually less than two years now to the Olympics. I'm still able to do seasons that are better than ever I've ever done before,” he told BBC Sport. "If everything goes to plan, I'll be there."
The World Cup campaign for Ryding begins in Levi, Finland on 16-17 November as he is a slalom specialist. He stunned the field when topping the podium in Kitzbühel, Austria two years ago.
Ryding has been on the podium on six more occasions, while at the Olympics his best placing was ninth in the slalom at PyeongChang 2018.
Mia Brookes
No longer just a future star, 17-year-old snowboarder Mia Brookes is now mixing it with the best in the world.
After winning gold and silver in the big air and slopestyle events at the Junior World Championships in 2022, a year later she won slopestyle gold in the World Championships proper.
The Chesire-born teenager has since won several accolades, including the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2023, while her 2024-25 season is already underway.
In early September, Brookes finishing second in the slopestyle season-opening World Cup event in Cardrona, New Zealand, but only after the finals were cancelled due to weather – and scores from qualification were taken.
Brookes will next be in action at the big air event in Chur, Switzerland on 19 October, with a packed schedule also taking in Beijing, Aspen and Calgary on top of other Alpine destinations until March.
Bruce Mouat
The face of men’s curling in Britain, 30-year-old Bruce Mouat is out to upgrade on the silver he skippered his Great Britain team to at Beijing 2022.
But first, Mouat will skip for Scotland at the 2024 Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships on 16-23 November.
The top eight teams at the European Championships make the World Championships, taking place from 29 March to 6 April next year.
Mouat and his team will be expected to reach the worlds, having placed on the podium three times at that event and guiding Scotland to gold in 2023.
Beyond the major championships, Mouat will be in action at Grand Slam and other tour-level events across the globe, including the 2024 HearingLife Tour Challenge in Charlottetown, Canada on 1-6 October.
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson
British ice dancing partners Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson are two-time European silver medallists – 2023 and 2024 – and also won Grand Prix gold last season, at the NHK Trophy in Osaka, Japan.
For the 2024-25 season, they will be free skating to Beyonce as they go for further golds, with the six-time British champions competing at Skate America in October, the first of six Grand Prix events before the finals in Grenoble, France on 5-8 December.
Fear and Gibson, who placed 10th at the Beijing Olympics, also harbour dreams of making the world podium, having placed fourth at the past two World Championships.
The next World Figure Skating Championships take place on 25-30 March in Boston, USA.
Kirsty Muir
Like Brookes, 20-year-old freestyle skier Kirsty Muir goes down as a GB medal hope at the 2026 Olympics, having shown incredible promise as a young athlete already.
Muir won big air silver at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics in Lausanne, and went on to finish second at the 2023 Winter X Games in the big air, taking bronze in the slopestyle as well.
For now, she is on the comeback trail after a season-ending injury in December last year.
What had been her best season to date ended with a serious knee injury, Muir rupturing her ACL despite placing third at the Freeski Big Air World Cup event in Copper Mountain, USA.
Since then, she has been documenting her rehab on Instagram - having also undergone shoulder surgery - and now back on a BMX, it will be worth charting her progress back to the pipe with the season already underway, but World Cup events running on until late March.
