Yarnold and Deas continue Britain’s unlikely run of medal joy in the skeleton
Lizzy Yarnold’s second successive gold and a bronze for teammate Laura Deas in Pyeongchang in South Korea underlined Britain’s extraordinary dominance of Olympic women’s skeleton racing yesterday – a feat that is all the more surprising considering the country does not boast a single track.
British women have medalled at every skeleton event since the sport was reintroduced to the Games in 2002, with the country’s men finally getting their first in the sport since 1948 via Dom Parsons during their competition on Thursday.
Despite the lack of a track in their own country, Britons, as with so many sports, can claim to have been the founding fathers. The “Cresta Run” ice track, spiritual home of the Winter Olympics skeleton event, was invented by bored British gentry staying at a highend Swiss hotel – though it still does not allow women to ride its icy twists and curves.
Somehow, from there to here, Britain, and their women, have become the sport’s major force.
“I got into it by myself. There wasn’t any of the structure that there is now,” said Amy Williams, who won Britain’s first skeleton gold at Vancouver in 2010.
Four years later in Sochi, Yarnold matched Williams’s gold.
Yesterday she reached new heights, becoming the first Briton to successfully defend any Winter Olympic title.
Deas’s bronze meant there were two British medallists on a podium for the first time.
That is in part thanks to a conscious and calculated effort by British sports officials to find women whose bodies are perfectly suited for the sport via an official “Girls4Gold” recruitment programme.
“Girls would rock up on a day, get tested, then be popped into different sports that their body was suited to,” Williams said.
While the lack of a home track puts them at a “massive disadvantage”, it changes the way the federation chooses its athletes, said Danny Holdcroft , Head of Performance at the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association.
“It makes sure that we are detailed in selecting the right athletes,” said Holdcroft, who added that British sliders have, remarkably, only around three hours of actual sliding time on the ice per season.
Instead, they use a roller-coaster like track on which to practice the crucial fast start to shave off time in an Olympic sport measured in hundredths of seconds.
“I’m overwhelmed and exhausted. I don’t really know how it happened,” Yarnold said. “After the first run I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be able to finish the race because my chest infection was so bad I was struggling to breathe, and I got here only with the help of my team.
“I guess four years ago, three years ago the whole team all dared to dream that this was possible and I just went with all them we managed it.”