Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt are favourites for next year’s Winter Games despite the absence of facilities

Pinned to a wall inside the small wooden hut housing Britain’s only skeleton and bobsleigh push-start track is a notice delivering health and safety commands with no hint of irony.

Alongside instructions to ensure leaves and other hazards are cleared prior to use is the stipulation that the track must be free of ice. That Britain is the world’s only top sliding nation permanently navigating a lack of frozen facilities betrays the directive’s inadvertent satire.