Sheffield Steelers Sam Jones aiming to take first step in realising childhood Winter Olympics ambition with GB

Born in Walsall but having moved to Canada when a young child, Jones got his on and off-ice education in British Colombia.

He returned to these shores to continue his hockey career in the summer of 2016, aged just 18.

After a season with Milton Keynes Lightning in the now defunct English Premier Ice Hockey league, Jones returned to Canada for a year before trying his luck again in the country where he was born.

A year at Swindon Wildcats was followed by a move up to the Elite League with Fife Flyers in 2019.

But it was his move to Sheffield Steelers – initially for the behind-closed-doors Elite Series in 2021 – where he could truly begin to realise his international ambitions. A World Championship debut under GB head coach Pete Russell followed in Riga, Latvia in 2021.

Ever since, Jones has been a defensive mainstay for the national team, playing an integral role in GB’s successful attempt at the first time of asking in returning to the top tier of the World Championships when they won the Division 1A tournament in Nottingham last year.

This week, however, heralds a different challenge, one which Jones and his GB team-mates will hope comes in two parts.

Again, Russell’s players will enjoy the relative comforts of home ice, this time at Cardiff’s Vindico Arena where they will host a four-team Olympic Qualifying tournament.

Should they prevail over Romania, China and Serbia a further, much tougher test awaits in August, when they will face-off against higher-ranked nations in the final round of qualifying for the Games which will be staged in Milan-Cortina in Italy in 2026.

But first things first.

While GB can and should go into this week’s tournament a confident group – they are the highest-ranked of the four teams – nothing will or should be taken for granted.

For Jones, recently returned to the Steelers line-up following a six-week injury layoff, this week is an opportunity to go some way to realising a childhood ambition.

“I think I wrote down in my Grade Six yearbook or something when asked what I wanted to do when I was older that I wanted to play at the Winter Olympics with Great Britain,” he said.

“So now that we have a chance to try and get to the Olympics, it’s a cool thing to look back on and see that.

“Obviously, this is the first step along the way. We’re not even thinking about August – we’re just concentrating on this tournament.

“If we go down there and we play like we did in Nottingham last year, where everyone battles hard and plays to their full potential, I really think we can push forward and make that next stage of qualifying.”

Jones will have plenty of familiar faces around him this week, most obviously in the shape of Steelers’ team-mates Robert Dowd, Brandon Whistle and Cole Shudra, who was called up on Monday night as a late injury replacement for Cardiff’s Josh Waller.

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Shudra has had an excellent season since returning to the Steelers on a full-time basis in the summer, while Whistle has only just returned from a six-week injury lay-off himself last weekend and is hoping to make his competitive debut for GB in Cardiff.

Having played at the top tier of the World Championships for three straight years before their relegation in 2022, GB’s players will go into their opening game against China the more experienced group.

It is a hectic schedule of three games in four days, but that comes as nothing new to the GB team.

“The top division at the worlds is seven games in nine days or something like that and last year in Nottingham was something like five games in seven,” said Jones. “So we’re used to the tournament format – I think we actually thrive on it.

“The games come thick and fast, it makes it an exciting time and to be honest I think guys would prefer to be playing more games rather than practising anyway.”

More often than not, home ice is seen as an obvious advantage, although GB have had mixed results in recent years - winning gold and promotion when in Belfast and Nottingham for World Championship events, but missing out on making it through to the last round of Olympic qualification when they staged the pre-qualifers at the National Ice Centre back in February 2020.

For Jones, though, being in Cardiff – he, Dowd and Whistle joined up with the rest of the GB squad for their pre-tournament training squad on Monday evening – will definitely be an advantage.

“It will help in the sense of the travel schedule being a lot easier, there’s no travelling overseas or anything like that,” explained Jones.

“To be honest, it doesn’t matter where we are, we’ll go in with the same mentality. It definitely helped being in Nottingham last year, so I’d say it is an advantage.

“Wherever the tournament was, we might be the highest-ranked team but we wouldn’t go in with an over-confident mindset anyway. If you do that, you’re just setting yourselves up for failure.”