Welcome to Team GB’s Milan base: TV, video games, popcorn and 5,000 teabags | Winter Olympics 2026

Team GB’s athletes on the Winter Olympics can be fuelled by 130kg of Quaker porridge oats, 5,000 Aldi teabags and a Formula One simulator. The Guardian was given uncommon entry to the group’s base on the Olympic Village in Milan, the place 10 of their 55 athletes, together with the determine skaters Lewis Gibson and Lilah Fear, are staying.

The rooms are cramped, nearly sufficiently big to suit two single beds, however Team GB is trying to make athletes really feel extra at house with a big TV ­exhibiting BBC One, jigsaw puzzles and Connect 4. There are large ­provides of popcorn, espresso and fruit pastilles.

Team GB’s deputy chef de mission, Anne Sargent, mentioned the group had additionally introduced in sofas, stationary train bikes and a room for docs and physios. “When we take over our spaces in the village, it’s just a completely empty room,” she mentioned. “We work hard to ship out a lot of entertainment, snacks, the TV and games to make it a real home from home.”

At the Paris Games there have been complaints from British athletes concerning the lack of meat within the village. Sargent mentioned there had been no such issues this time round. “The food’s been brilliant,” she mentioned. “There’s ­everything we’d want in the dining hall: porridge at breakfast and loads of meat at dinner.”

When athletes stroll across the village, they’ll additionally use a big gymnasium, play desk soccer and air hockey and even play the piano. There are additionally free drinks machines, stacked with Coca-Cola and Innocent smoothies.

The British skater Ellia ­Smeding did establish one factor that was ­lacking: excessive‑high quality espresso. “We’re going to scope out some good coffee shops,” she mentioned. “I’m much more into filter coffee, a good pourover, fruity flavours, light. I do enjoy good cappuccino, but good pourovers are my thing.”

There are additionally indicators on the partitions that warn Team GB athletes: “Take Hygiene Seriously! Germs are everywhere, don’t let them compete.” Athletes are informed to shut the bathroom lid earlier than they flush, cough and sneeze into their elbows, and to scrub their fingers often. As one signal places it: “Be Safe. Be Smart. Protect the Team”.

It is a far cry from the Beijing Winter Games, when British athletes have been examined day by day for Covid and to not combine with different groups.

The first athletes start their Olympic campaigns on Wednesday with the blended curling. Britain’s group of Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds, who’re second favourites behind Canada, begin with a gaggle match towards Norway.