By Mark Staniforth, PA Sport, Salt Lake City

Turin 2006 loomed into view as the Salt Lake City Winter Games closed with Great Britain celebrating their best medal haul for 66 years.

Chef de Mission Simon Clegg insisted there was no room for complacency after the curling gold and bronzes for Alex Coomber and Alain Baxter provided three Winter medals for the first time since the Garmisch games in 1938.

Clegg will debrief with each individual federation of the sports represented in Utah, and has warned that the statistical success of the team will not obscure the fact that funding could be cut from those teams or individuals who did not perform.

"We will be asking serious questions of the athletes who have underperformed and if appropriate we will be raising the qualifying standard for the next Winter Olympic Games," Clegg said.

"What is needed is accountability and if people underperform they should expect their funding to be cut. But if people are successful we expect that success to be rewarded."

Baxter's brilliant bronze has thrust alpine skiing to the top of the pile.

Clegg, who said he never thought he would see a British alpine medallist, called the 28-year-old Scot somebody who had achieved success despite, and not because of, the system.

"It is a simply awesome result in the scale of things," Clegg added. "Over the last 10-15 years there has been a year-on-year reduction in government support for skiing and I now expect this decision to be reversed.

"It is not only because of Alain's medal but because of the results of the entire alpine team. It is quite obvious we have some talented individuals in alpine skiing and they deserve not only our praise and our respect, but our financial support as well.

"We have absolutely no problem with accountability but success must be rewarded as well, and there is no more deserving a case than a sport which has suffered financially for many years.

"We are a third world nation when it comes to how much we currently fund our national ski team."

Clegg cut a beleaguered figure during the first week of the Games as his prediction of it being the best Games since the Second World War took a battering.

One of the medal hopes, Lesley McKenna, crashed twice in the snowboarding half-pipe competition on the first full day. The two women's moguls representatives finished last and second last.

The British team resorted to championing Mark Hatton's competitive but modest 25th place in the luge as a measure of success.

Things changed on what they called 'Super Wednesday', with Coomber's skeleton bronze in blizzard conditions matched by the British women's curling team's amazing victory over world and Olympic champions Canada 60 miles away on the Ogden Ice Sheet.

That success brought Clegg to tears. He was equally happy the following day when Rhona Martin sent down the last stone to win the first British Winter gold since Torvill and Dean.

They kept coming. Baxter's bronze eclipsed Britain's previous best in an Olympic event, fourth by Gina Hathorn in Grenoble.

"It is easy to say that we are not an alpine nation and easy to have a target of just one medal," Clegg said. "But we aimed higher and it is particularly satisfying to have achieved the goal that I set out in November of last year, that of effectively having our best Winter Olympics since Garmisch in 1936."

That the medals came in three different disciplines was another cause of satisfaction for Clegg. But the result of those successes is that there will be sweaty palms this week amongst other federations.

The uninspiring performances of the bobsleigh teams, who currently receive the biggest slice of the financial pie, must lead to a rethink. Speedskating did not produce even a glimmer of a medal, and the biathlon results were poor.

But overall Clegg is right in suggesting the 2002 Winter Games of Salt Lake City should be a cause for celebration. In Nagano four years ago, we had to rely on a last-ditch bobsleigh bronze to make an impression on the medals table.

Here the team benefited from the first-ever British holding camp for a Winter Games, in Calgary, and they soldiered on through the mounting adversity of the first week.

They were the Games when we flew head first through a blizzard on a tea tray. They were the Games when we brought curling home after 200 years of hurt. They were the Games when snow did not seem such a bad thing after all. And best of all, they were the Games when we won more medals than Australia.

The British Winter Olympic class of 2002 deserve our heart-felt congratulations.