Well hello dear chilly chums. I do hope you aren’t or haven’t been stranded in the snow. Even London has had snow overnight. A real joy for the children, but anything but funny if you can’t get the car off the drive and consequently have to walk the kids to school whilst trying to push a small person in a buggy..... that would be my morning then. I was sweating I think we can use the word profusely, by the time I got home. My son did walk for bits of it. Long enough to throw a few snowballs at me and then complain that it was too slippy and that he wanted to get back in the buggy..... ahh happy, happy days. And I was forced to wear a bobble hat, which is rarely a good look for anyone.....

However hat hair aside, it did seem like the appropriate point to get mildy excited about the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. They are looming now to say the least and team GB has got its best team in years, indeed possibly in history. Shelley Rudman was our only medallist four years ago in Turin when she took silver in the Skeleton. That is a sport which is about essentially hurtling down an ice run on a tea tray at speeds approaching 100mph. I recall interviewing her on BBC Breakfast the morning after her success and she was one of the most charming, modest athletes I have ever had the pleasure of talking to. I wish her every success, I really do.

Well since Turin, she has had a busy time of it, organising the training for 2010 around the birth of a daughter, who arrived in October 2007. Her long-time partner Kristan Bromley is also a very strong medal hope in the skeleton, so keep your eyes peeled for those two. But there are also other GB chances in the bobsleigh, the curling, speed skating, snowboard-cross and the figure skating. So in just over a month from now, many of us will be up at all hours watching sports we never knew existed, cheering on a bunch of plucky Brits who bat way above their average for a non-alpine nation. A date for the diary methinks.

Speaking of winter sports, my favourite world leader and I hope yours, Vladimir Putin, has been at it again, showing the rest of us how to run a global superpower and squeeze in a little sport. This time it was skiing. An intriguing photocall with the similarly vertically challenged Dimitry Medvedev in Sochi, which will of course host the next Winter Olympics. Now sadly I cannot track down this week’s pictures, so you will have to make do with last year’s photocall at the same location, as the Russian PM and the Russian President show us a clean pair of skis. Pure joy.

Tags: Shelley Rudman, Kristan Bromley, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, Vladimir Putin, Dimitry Medvedev

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