Netflix and knitting for golden girl Lizzy
What does Britain’s most decorated Winter Olympian do after winning her second skeleton gold medal?
IT WAS around 6.30am yesterday when Britain’s ice queen got up after three hours of broken sleep. To understand the weird and wonderful tapestry of Lizzy Yarnold’s personality, it is necessary to know what she did next.
She thought for a while about her 85mph sled ride to a second Winter Olympics gold medal, and then she started knitting. No patterns because she’s never quite grasped the technique, but over an hour or so as the sun came up she did a few loops until she had made a little strip.
‘It was quite calming,’ she said. ‘I’m not sleeping very well at the moment and I didn’t know what to do. So I watched an Australian murder mystery on Netflix and chilled with some knitting.
‘I remember knitting when Amy Williams was going in the World Cup in 2011. I think my position would have switched with her depending on her result so I was watching the race on my laptop and all I could do was sit there knitting. It’s a nice thing, as Nan taught me to knit years ago and passed away two years ago, so it’s a way to feel connected with her.’
It’s just something that stayed with her. So has an interest in lampshade making. And the lessons from an accountancy course. And the binge watching of
Downton Abbey. All of which make up the glorious contradictions in a woman who utterly excels in the bone-jarring madness of skeleton racing. Normal but not normal. Sedate but bonkers. Knitting but planning a second sky dive in the near future ‘ because it is an amazing feeling of freedom’.
By her estimation, she is ‘just a girl from Kent’, but in any other she is Britain’s most decorated Winter Olympian, having surpassed the gold and bronze medals of figure skater Jeannette Altwegg and ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.
Simply put, there is nothing typical about the 29-year-old who added a golden hue to Britain’s Super Saturday in Pyeongchang.
Izzy Atkin and Laura Deas were excellent in their respective bronze medals from slopestyle skiing and the skeleton, but it is Yarnold, yet again, who lends heavyweight credibility to a team that invested £32million of Lottery money in the cause. It remains to be seen if she will ever repeat such heights, because there were noticeably few guarantees offered when the subject of her future arose here.
‘I’ll take a break and get back to you — it’s less than 24 hours since I finished the last Olympics,’ she said. But having taken a sabbatical year after Sochi 2014 because of issues with her motivation, it stands to reason the grind of training and travel might no longer appeal after twice scaling the mountain.
‘I feel very motivated today,’ she said. ‘I feel that I can jump back on the sled. But I’d recommend any athlete to take a break. It’s a four-year cycle and, even though you’re desperate to carry on, it’s a long time to be at your best. As athletes we don’t allow ourselves to be ill or injured. Being human you need to have ups and downs.’
It is the ups and downs that make Yarnold’s achievements in South Korea so impressive. She had struggled throughout the season and was ranked only ninth in the 2017- 18 World Cup campaign, which included a diagnosis for a vestibular disorder that leaves her feeling disorientated at speed. The skeleton equivalent, perhaps, of a skier allergic to snow.
But she dealt with those problems, just as she got over an instinct to withdraw after Friday’s first run, when a chest infection left her struggling to breathe. She looked ready to pass out as she was helped to her feet by support staff but she got back on it and over the next three rounds won the gold.
‘As each minute passes it becomes more of a reality,’ said Yarnold. ‘ There’s a whole dream of, ‘‘If everything goes right, like, if I do this, if I get this corner, if that transfers, if the speed comes, everything will work magically”. I guess now it’s just a relief that everything did go to plan.’
It did, despite the competition playing out to the complaints of certain rivals over the equipment used by her, Deas and Dom Parsons in the winning of their medals. The issue became moot once their suits and sleds were passed legal, but there has been a degree of irritation within Team GB over intimations that their sliders were only in the mix because of their technology.
Yarnold rejected the gripes. ‘We’ve pushed the tech and found out as much as we can like any nation,’ she said. ‘ But I’d always say the slider has the most impact.’
Her schedule now includes a ‘holiday of cocktails and chilling’ with Deas, before acting as a bridesmaid in the latter’s wedding this summer. There will also be a procession of school visits.
‘My Sochi gold medal was like Frodo’s ring with the way children’s faces lit up when they saw it,’ she said. ‘It is important and I think it inspires people. They see videos of me hurtling down the track, just a schoolgirl from Kent.’ Normal. And yet not normal in the slightest.