The United Kingdom Minister for Sport Helen Grant has congratulated women's skeleton athlete Lizzy Yarnold on winning Team GB's first gold medal of the Sochi Winter Olympics.
The 25-year-old recorded a track-record time on her way to comfortably beating American Noelle Pikus-Pace to the title on Friday evening in Russia.
Grant, who has held her current office since October 2013, has declared the Sochi Games Britain's best in 12 years and is hoping that Yarnold's success will inspire an uptake in winter sports participation.
A statement read: "Huge congratulations to Lizzy Yarnold on her incredible win. On the back of Jenny Jones's fantastic bronze, it's Team GB's women leading the way and already it's our best Winter Olympics since Salt Lake City in 2002.
"The likes of Lizzy and Jenny are such positive role models for young women and I am sure they will have inspired many to go and give winter sports a try."
Yarnold is only Britain's 10th Winter Games champion and she ensured that her country retained the women's skeleton title following the triumph Amy Williams at Vancouver 2010.
Joe Fish
