British team heading for Vancouver under a financial cloud

AFTER the giddy heights of Beijing, followers of Olympic Team GB are in for an entirely contrasting experience when the Winter version of the Games opens in Vancouver next week.

That's if the Games go ahead. Such has been the paucity of snow in British Columbia after Vancouver's warmest January on record that massive amounts of artificial snow are being brought into Cypress just outside the city, venue for the freestyle skiing and snowboarding.

Officials feel the problems can be dealt with, and the resort of Whistler, some 80 miles north of Vancouver, has plenty snow, so the alpine skiing and Nordic events should be unaffected by the unseasonably warm weather.

Team GB will be competing under a cloud, however.

Thanks to last-minute deals, 14 competitors will still be in the skiing and snowboarding events, despite the collapse into administration of governing body Snowsport GB, otherwise known as The British Ski & Snowboard Federation Ltd with debts of 600,000. In order to preserve the athletes' chances of participating at Vancouver, Lord Colin Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, personally intervened to set up a new governing body which is a limited company that will trade as British Ski and Snowboarding. It is not known where the new body will be based, as the present Snowsport GB headquarters at the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena has closed and auctioneers are due there tomorrow.

The whole issue of Snowsport GB may yet end in the courts. The governing body's board was informed in early December that the company was trading insolvently and had been doing so for as much as a year. As a result, the role of the company's directors will be scrutinised.

At least one former employee – as many as six staff were made redundant on Friday by administrators BDO – has consulted lawyers about suing the administrators or new governing body under the TUPE (Transfer of Undertaking Protection of Employment) laws.

There have also been allegations of staff being bullied by "outsiders", and chief executive John Dunlop, who only took over in November, is known to be unhappy that he was not told the full state of Snowsport GB's situation when he was employed.

Dunlop is making no comment, but another former employee told Scotland on Sunday: "It was not John's fault, as we all knew that the level of debt was too great, and had been for ages."

Another former employee said: "It is well known that snowsports in Britain are full of people with vested interests and conflicts of interest who put their own little empires and fight their own corners first and foremost. The problem is that nobody really cares about the athletes who all lost funding because people would not pull together and sponsorship dried up."

Only skier Chemmy Alcott and snowboarder Zoe Gillings have any real chance of a medal on snow, though Scottish slalom specialist Andy Noble could provide a shock.

The overall British team has been set a target of three medals of any colour from the Games, but such is the lack of investment in winter sports by UK Sport – 6m over four years compared to 400m for summer sports, according to the BOA's Moynihan – that Team GB will be heavily dependent on Scotland's ten curlers bringing home a medal if that aim is to be met.

Skips Eve Muirhead and David Murdoch know they face a formidable task, but the women's and men's rinks contain some of the finest talent Scotland has ever produced.

Shelley Rudman won Britain's sole medal at Turin in 2006 and just missed out on the World Cup title last year, but is ready to go one better at Whistler. Ice dancers John and Sinead Kerr finished fifth in the European Championships and will be outsiders for a medal.

For the home nation, Canada's curlers and ice hockey players will be the teams most under pressure in the Games, with Team Canada optimistic about securing the men's ice hockey gold.

Vancouver and Canada have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Games, and it is a sad indictment of the modern world that far more has been spent to protect the event than it did to build the venues where athletes will compete. Airport-style screening for spectators at venues, divers patrolling the harbour and hundreds of police from across the country are all part of one of the most extensive security operations in Canadian history.