For those unable to crane their necks and see the timing screens at the Cortina Sliding Centre, Matt Weston was on hand to offer a leaderboard update.
The Team GB star let out a guttural roar when he clocked the leaderboard, saw he broke the track record and his his name on top at the halfway stage of the men’s skeleton.
The 28-year-old delivered a statement second run to open-up a 0.30s advantage over Germany’s Axel Jungk and will return on Friday night as the man to beat in the race for gold.
Weston was the only slider to go under 56 seconds, his time of 55.88s giving him a combined 1:52.09s. Christopher Grotheer sits third for Germany, a further 0.16s back, while Weston’s teammate Marcus Wyatt is seventh and 0.66s from the podium.
"It's pretty crazy [to be the overnight leader] but I take every run as run one. I will completely reset myself, switch off for a bit and then re-focus tomorrow,” Weston said.
"I have taught myself to love the pressure and love the expectation I have on my shoulders.
“I didn't like it when I first had success, but now I have turned it into fire that I can go out and give my best."
With the sun blocked out by thick cloud, and light snow falling on the nearby mountains, it was bitterly cold on Thursday morning and Weston admits it took him a bit of time to heat up.
His opening run started with a costly bump against the wall at the top of the track and he was clearly annoyed when he finished. Despite that, he still led by 0.06s.
The world champion tidied that up for the second run and nailed it.
"I was quite annoyed after the first run,” he said.
“[Corners] 1, 2 and 3 has been an error in training, I tried to be a bit too relaxed because I tried to over-compensate for race day nerves.
“I was a bit too soft on the first few corners. It was quite costly. I was pretty glad that I was able to fix it on run 2.
“I didn't see [my track record get broken] - I deliberately put my helmet down so I couldn't see the times or anything. I like to keep it as a blank slate and focus on me. It felt like a good run.”
Weston is back on track on Friday night, with the third run at 6.30pm UK time and the decisive final run just after 8pm.
“There's still things that I can improve on which I think is an extremely lucky and fortunate place to be,” he added.
“The fact that I want to improve, I want to chase, there's still things that I can get time out of.
“There's a lot of stress relief. I knew it was a good run and I knew that my coach was happy.”
If Weston believes there is still lots to work on, Vancouver 2010 Olympic champion Amy Williams believes there was not much more he could have done right on Thursday.
Speaking in the TNT Sports studio, she was effusive in her praise for how Weston commanded the course.
"It was close to prefection, he was a little bit quicker on the first run," she said.
"He didn't hit the wall on run two, which means he kept his speed form that start - he had no hits where others did.
"You could hear the swish of the ice, there's no breaking, there's no helmet on the ice, he was so tucked down in that perfect position, just balancing on his feet, but the Germans used their feet a lot with the steering - whereas he managed to avoid that.
"He just has confidence in his steers confidence in his position, beautifully down the middle of those straights and getting the perfect entrances and exits."
Sportsbeat 2026