Lake Placid World Cup 3 2007

8th place! Not a bad result at all!! So overall I maintained my World Ranking of 7th. I think after some success, like 3rd in Park City last week, as an athlete you only want to move forward and do better! That's only healthy, but to stay positive you must keep your goals at the forefront of your mind. As long as you achieve those your are on the right path to where you want to go and at the moment I am on the right path! If a little ahead of schedule! The British Team will take some well deserved rest over Christmas before we start the European leg of the World Cup tour. Not too many mince pies though - testing takes place two days after Christmas day (I don't want to look like this guy!!) Photo from 'The Flying Sumo' restaurant in Park City!

Park City World Cup 2 2007

3rd Place! My first medal! It feels great! I was 3rd after the first run, but smashed my arm after being too high out of one of the bottom corners! It has really stiffened up some what now, but I put it to the back of my mind (in fact it left my mind all together) for the second run, and I maintained my 3rd place! Once again Great Britain as a whole did well, with Amy Williams also picking up a bronze for the girls! Off to Lake Placid for the final race before Christmas, let's hope we stay on the same way (we're planning on it!)
The weeks training hadn't started in the best of ways after a bout of food poisoning over the weekend due to dodgy hotel food! Local and organic are not policies employed by The Hampton, although as part of the Hilton group of hotels they do support a variety of good causes (mainly via encouragement of their clients good will!) but maybe they should address some issues closer to home, like recycling and supporting their local economy by buying in some healthy locally produced food rather than synthetic, processed rubbish! I'll make some suggestions!

Calgary World Cup 1 2007

12th place! Not a bad result considering that in this race last year I came 25th! I also showed some good potential with a first run that placed me 6th....consistency will come with experience, and every race adds to that experience for the only race that counts - Vancouver 2010!
For now the team makes it's way to Park City, Utah in good spirits as this was Great Britains best ever overall result in a World Cup race with a mens and a womens medal: Kristan Bromley 2nd and Amy Williams 3rd!

British Selection Race 2 - Cesana 2007

2nd place! So overall joint first with Kristan Bromley in the British Rankings for the selection of this seasons World Cup team. Goal achieved...although.....I had a great first run and was in first place until some minor problems driving my second run left me 2nd! I think that's healthy for an athlete - to always want to do better! There was drama in the selection of 3rd place, as Andy Wood and Adam Pengilly had a one run race off! Adam got it by a few tenths of a seond! But we're starting to show real strength in depth in the British mens team! So back in the UK for 5 days before the American World Cup Races before Christmas!

British Selection Race 1 - Winterberg 2007

I won! Great start to this seasons campaign in a very close race. All through training the top 5 World Cup qualified athletes had been battling it out, in the knowledge that first across the line win the 3 spots available on the World Tour! Anyone could have taken first place, and next weeks race in Cesana, Italy looks to be another hotly contested affair, where the results will be added to todays results to decide the overall British rankings for the 2007/8 season!
On another note: as I'm holistically trying to assess the ecological impact of my participation in Skeleton throughout my sporting career, I'd like to nominate a word to our team kit sponsors Adidas, who's link to their Environment and Sustainability policies I have provided in the links on the right. I feel they take consideration of environmental issues seriously and are at least thinking about it and looking for solutions. I think they will respond to what I feel is a growing market for sustainably produced 'greener' products! As I progress towards podium finishes on a World level, I may, as a professional athlete, be able in some capacity to influence these policies in an even more positive direction?!

2007/8 SEASON

The season is underway!! I'm printed on the side of our team bus! And looking forward to selection races over the next couple of weeks! We're in Norway at the moment, and move to Germany and Italy soon for races on the 1st and 10th Nov respectively! The top 3 ranked British guys and top 2 girls go onto World Cup - I hope to be one of them (the guys that is!!)

Carbon Offsetting

Is carbon offsetting worthwhile? First up, watch An Inconvenient Truth....
Climate Change is happening due to human actions - and that includes Skeleton!! The debate on the value of Carbon Offsetting is whether you actually contribute to something that wouldn't happen without your help, and whether your contribution actually 'cancels out' the pollution your actions created. I've decided that making a financial contribution to a 'genuine' CO2 offsetting programme will have more environmental benefit than if I did nothing - although admittedly not as much as not flying at all! The competition season has us travelling a lot (9 seperate locations around the world in 2006/7). Using www.climatecare.org my flights were calculated to have emitted 5.97 tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to the annual emissions of an average UK house (although at altitude this has a worse effect on global warming!) In the UK I use the train and cycle a lot, my business is also orientated around improving the energy efficiency of the UK housing stock - it is an issue I'm very aware of. I believe success in Skeleton will give me a platform from which to have a positive influence on these issues, until then I'll continue to look for more inovative ways to reduce my own personal carbon footprint.

Konigsee World Cup 2007

The season finale was the best event yet – with a local crowd and great group of supporters from home. I finished 20th after having problems skidding out of the spur! The encouraging thing is that I’m able to get a second run, even on a bad day! Overall, with all the points added up I’m 10th in the world. I’m looking forward to next season already, and to doing well! But for now it’s time to go home back to Bristol and get some quality training done! After some extra time in Igls coaching the Navy and testing some new runners. I’ll give a spring and summer report on progress, so keep checking and linking to my business website, which should be transforming in early summer too :)

Winterberg World Cup 2007

Top 10's are always good and I squeezed in with 10th place - my overall world ranking is now bumped up to 9th (just 1 point behind 8th with one race left to go next week!) And considering how traing had gone (you get 6 training runs in the days preceding the race at each track) it was actually one of my best performances to date! On the last day of training my runs felt ok but I was well off the pace with a 20th place!! No panic - there's always a reason when things don't go well, and on further investigation a support bar had come loose in my sled. I'm learning to put these difficulties, technical or otherwise, to the back of my mind and perform well - which I did! The picture is of me and Alexander Tretiakov with the BIG beer he got for winning the race! Thanks to Peter Wood for the photo, and supporting the rest of the team out here (his son Andy Wood was also competing for Great Britain - see his Skeleton blog in my links!).

Cesana World Cup 2007

7th place! My second top ten of the season, which bumps me up to 10th in the overall world rankings. I had an extra week in Italy while the rest of the team went home, which helped my result, as Cesana is probably the most technically difficult track in the world! A word to the weather (again!): it’s been so warm here that all the athletes were outside changing in the sun! There has been very little snow, I’m sure February in the Alps should be colder than this! The picture was taken on a day off at the beach, two hours away from the track, and it’s an ode to The Endless Summer surf film! It’s a great place here with warm seas and sun so close to mountains and snow – as long as they keep getting snow! Skeleton is a winter sport after all!

St.Moritz World Championships 2007

A two day race - early morning on the first day, -15oc, bit of snow and my first run left me 23rd! Not great! But with a good talk from coach Mickey Gruenburger and some technical adjustments to my sled, my second run was much better - 12th fastest, leaving me in 18th overall after the first day. My goal was to finish top 20, so dispite the dissapointment of the first run, I was set to be able to do this on the final day. It was snowing a little bit again, which usually provides pretty bad conditions for Skeleton, as running through snow seriously slows you down. It was light tho, and there were no major worries. A good push of 4.97 (anything under 5 was good!) and ok runs on the second day (14th and 8th!) Ment I picked up a few places for an overall finish of 15th! A great result for my first World Champs!

Igls World Cup 2007

From Nagano it was a 26 hour trip back to Europe to continue on the competition circuit......I managed to watch 5 films on the plane - the best being one of my favourites from the summer; Little Miss Sunshine, brilliant! Anyway, after a week of waking up at 4 in the morning and dealing with some crazy snoring action from my room mate (if I got up and started sawing up logs in the room, it would be about the same noise!) we had a race in some very warm and wet conditions. It felt wrong to have that kind of weather at this time of year - it made me think, along with there being no ice on Mirror Lake when we were at Lake Placid; we are facing some climate changes that in hindsight we may wish we had done something about when we had the chance: watch An Inconvienient Truth - that says it all a lot more concisely than I can here. That said - I have just taken a 12 hour flight! I'm looking into ways to carbon 'neutralise' the effects my lifestyle makes on the environment - I'll keep you posted on that one with a blog at the end of the season, around March/April time......
The race result was actually ok although it felt like I under performed cos I could have pushed better - but my first run 15th and second run 9th ment an overall 12th place - so my World Ranking overall at this point is 13th. And the best thing is that I'm thouroughly confident that I can do even better! When I put all the elements together: the push, the driving and the consistency - then I'll be able to challenge the best in the world! :)

Nagano World Cup 2007

After a mellow Christmas break with friends and family I was told we WOULD send a mens team to Nagano, Japan to compete in the World Cup race. Cool! How often do you get to go to Japan?! We weren't going to go, but a tricky situation with points to qualify all three of us for the World Champs ment it was necessary.....It's a great place Japan, I really like their respect thing - the way it should be! The track was pretty cool too, a lot of ups aswells as downs (the gradient that is!), and there had been a big dump of snow the day before which also made for some great scenery and major international snow ball fights! I got on pretty well at the track and the superb hospitality of the local sliders and the towns residents (a big opening ceremony and bus loads of kids to cheer us on) made for a great event. I finished 4th overall!! A great result for me! I know not all the athletes were there cos of the long journey, but I placed pretty well amongst those who turned up!
So my first medal (places 1st to 6th recieve medals in Skeleton, in recognition of the fact that the results are usually so close; within a couple of tenths of a second i.e. 0.20 sec!) Next time I hope to be on the podium!! Thanks to all those I met in Japan, it was great to visit such a different culture - I don't think there'll ever be naked hotsprings introduced to the UK!!

World Cup 2006/7

This season I had to rank at least 3rd in the British selection races in Lillehammer and get two top 5 results on the Americas Cup before Christmas to advance onto the World Cup tour. I did it!! Was 3rd in the first race and 2nd in the British Champs - making me joint 2nd overall in our selection races.
Then it was to Calgary Canada for the first Americas Cup races - another success, with a 4th on the first day and a 2nd the next! All the British men proved themselves to have steped up a level this year, it was a close thing, so now I had my opportunity to progress to the world level, I had to take it! Which ment hanging around in Calgary for the World Cup race a few weeks later with the team hamster Moritz (another story!) I was hopefull of a good result having learnt the track so well with coach Mark 'Woody' Wood, but it was not to be with a finish of 25th! The lesson I learnt was that you payed for a mistake in a World Cup race - and a skid out of an important corner ment no second run (you have to be in the top 20 to get a second run!).
So it was with some trepidation that I travelled to the next race in Park City, Utah (the site of Skeleton's return to the Olympics in 2002). I had never been here before and only had 6 runs in official training to learn what I could and make the cut! I was very pleased with a 17th place :) It gave me confidence to go Lake Placid, New York for the last race before Christmas.
9th place!! Yeah, after the first run! But Skeleton is a two run race - it pays to be consistent, and my inexperience showed as I dropped to a final position of 16th.....still very happy with that tho!
I'm on World Cup and loving it! Now the roundups are updated, I'll get down to writing some more up to date reports! It's race day in Igls, Austria tomorrow - so I'll let you know how it goes and report on a very successful trip to Japan just after New Year!

So Far

After watching Skeleton at the 2002 Winter Olympics on TV in Spain whilst on a decathlon training camp (I competed in Decathlon for Great Britain from 2000-2004 and represented England at the 2002 Common Wealth Games)..... I thought "I could do that!" And investigated how to get into it - if someone else can do it, I must be able to! It just so happened that Britains first Talent ID squad was trialing that summer for the first time at Bath uni (follow the 'British Skeleton' link to get involved yourself!) My athletic training stood me in good sted and I won a place on the Talent ID squad, sliding my first, emotional weeks in Lillehammer, Norway later in 2002 - I loved it, the traveling, competing and adventure! After trying to combine Decathlon with Skeleton for a couple of years - including one year recovering and training through a broken foot from a pole vaulting accident - I decided to concentrate on Skeleton, cos I loved it and wanted to get to the Olympics!
So for the 2004/5 and 2005/6 seasons I competed for Great Britain on the Europa Cup circuit, enjoying some great times, but ultimatley trying to 'make it' onto the World Cup tour! See my next section for the 2006/7 story.........

About Skeleton

SKELETON - is headfirst sliding down a bobsleigh track at over 80mph! This blog is intended to give reports after each Skeleton race, or event, I compete in. Keeping you up to date with life on the Skeleton tour! Hopefully all the way to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games!