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!