Throw the former British Winter Olympians in an ice bath

There is a debate raging in the British media about about the lack of financial support given to the British Winter Olympics Team.

It has been described by some as "next to useless".

Am I the only one that finds the timing of these grumblings just a tad frustrating?

It is perhaps telling that the bulk of these criticisms are coming from former British Winter Olympians and not the broader British public.

Naturally, the media are more than happy to give these complaints air and print time as it coincides with the XXI Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada.

But do the majority of the British public - or should I say, the majority of those who actually tune in to watch the games - really give a damn about how many medals Britain picks up in Vancouver?

If the media really had our winter athletes' sincerest wishes at heart, their sports editors and correspondents would have been having running back page stories on this months ago.

So, I'll set my stall out.

I believe the BOA has got the funding balance just right.

In fact, I am more than happy for the British Olympic Team to continue propping up the medals table for years to come if it means our sports men and women - and our paralympic athletes for that matter - have a realistic chance of building on their recent success in the Summer Olympic Games in the sports that the majority of us actually follow and participate in.

Ice hockey aside, the rest of the winter sports on display are at best pastimes - alpine skiing, snowboarding - and at worst, obscure hobbies that the world only hears of when they get an Olympic outing every four years - skeleton, speed-skating, luge, curling, and such like.

Let the athletes from Lichenstein, Slovenia, Norway, Austria and so on battle it out with their North American counterparts for the medals I say.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a snow sports killjoy.

The games are a fantastic spectacle and snowboarding, downhill skiing and ice hockey are just a few of the sports that I have found absolutely gripping to watch. I'm also more than partial to a bit of bob-sledding when time necessitates it.

But for the majority of us, that usually means heading down to the local park for a bit of fun with the kids, not picking up the yellow pages to find the nearest skeleton track.

The simple fact of the matter is the Winter Olympics is the poor cousin of the Summer Olympic Games and I can't see this changing anytime soon.

Nor do I think this needs to change.

Indeed, it would probably come with the fully-fledged blessing of our chariot-racing Greek forefathers who who probably never saw a flake of snow in their lives.

It's time for the former British Winter Olympians who are lampooning the BOA for their lack of financial support to an Olympic Team who will measure success as landing on 29 February at Heathrow airport with three medals in the bag - incidentally, which would mean it was Britain's best Winter Olympics performance for decades - to have a severe reality check here.

Maybe someone should throw them in an Alpine ice-bath.

That would certainly refresh their cognition and perhaps then they'd be more in tune with, and watch the Winter Olympics like, the rest of us.

For a laugh.