Kristen Spours, a Swindon-based figure skater, earned Britain a place at the Milan 2026 Winter Olympics last week after finishing 22nd at the World Figure Skating Championships.
By finishing in the top 24 at the event in Boston, Massachusetts, Spours ensured that Great Britain will be represented in the women’s singles event at the Winter Olympics, which are due to be held in Milan next February.
Spours was awarded a score of 55.10 for her short programme on Wednesday, placing her 22nd of 33 competitors, enough to advance her to the free skate portion of the competition.
Her second routine of the championships did not entirely go to plan, with an attempted triple flip resulting in a fall for the Swindon athlete, however she recovered well enough to maintain her position in the standings and achieve her best world championship result to date.
This was Spours’ third time competing at the World Championships, and the first time she scored highly enough in the short programme to qualify for the free skate.
It is also the first time she has competed at the World Championships since moving to Swindon in 2022 to train under the guidance of Chris Boyadji and Zoe Jones, both accomplished international skaters in their own right.
Her time in Swindon has presented its challenges though, most notably in 2023 when flooding at the Link Centre caused the town’s only ice rink to close for several months, forcing Spours and her training partners to travel elsewhere to keep up their training on the ice.
However, since the Link Centre’s rink reopened, she has bounced back, winning her first senior British title in November of last year and following this up with a 9th place finish at European Championships in January.
Despite her success in Boston, Spours’ place on Team GB still hangs in the balance, as figure skating awards qualification places to national federations and not individual competitors. As a result, Spours will have to show good form throughout the upcoming season, and score highly at a number of competitions, including the British Championships, in order to book her place on the plane to Milan.
Should she be selected for the Olympics, Spours will become the first woman to represent Britain in the singles event on Olympic ice since Jenna McCorkell, who finished 25th at the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia.
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