It’s all downhill from here

Jake Wallis Simons relives the adrenalin rush of being a member of the elite Telegraph bobsleigh team

Two words. Emotional rollercoaster. That pretty much sums the thing up. And we haven’t even got into the bobsleigh yet. “I always feel a bit of a fraud at fitness places,” says Roz Speirs, the Telegraph’s deputy picture editor, rolling a cigarette and putting it aside for later. “It’s like going to a music shop when you can’t play an instrument.” “I feel like it’s cutting off my blood circulation,” says Richard Gray, the science correspondent, as he zips his goosebumped flesh into a shiny, skintight costume, like a four-year-old dressing up in a sleepsuit that he grew out of years ago. “So long as we don’t go any faster than a racehorse,” says Marcus Armytage, the racing correspondent, as he pokes his ears through two mysterious holes in the hood of his bobsleigh costume. (Marcus, a former jockey, won the Grand National in 1990.) “I should have warned them that I’ve got an unusually big head,” I say, desperately trying to twist a helmet the size of a teacup over my forehead. Together, the four of us comprise the newly formed, one-day-only, Telegraph bobsleigh team. It’s like Cool Runnings – the 1993 film about the Jamaican bobsleigh squad – only with journalists. What’s not to like? Quite a lot, as it turns out. It is a dismal January day, and we have just put on particularly unforgiving costumes in a chilly shed at the Push Start bobsleigh track at the University of Bath, where the British Olympic team trains. We look like so many bright blue haggises; our extremities are numb with cold; in front of us is a 140-metre hill with a crash barrier at the end; and we are being filmed for Telegraph online. It will be all downhill from here. But we know we’re going to have a blast. At the crest of the hill is the bobsleigh itself, a magnificent shining suppository of a thing, with the words “Team GB” emblazoned across its flanks. This 27-stone beast is enough to make the cheeks of even the most cynical journalist flush with patriotic pride. (The bobsleigh was actually invented by a group of drunken Victorian Englishmen, who one freezing night in St Moritz, Switzerland, sought a swifter route home from the pub. Or that’s one theory, anyway.) “The trick is to make sure you all get in quickly, in the right order,” says Nathan Bryer, 30, our bobsleigh coach. “You can either launch into the bob with both feet at once, or one at a time. Either way, get in, tuck your arms in, and hold on tight.” Feeling rather selfconscious, we rock the bobsleigh back and forth and then, on the count of three, let rip. There is a bit of faffing about in the middle of the bob, but we manage to get in, and at first we trundle along quite happily. Then we pass the crest of the hill, pick up speed and begin to plummet. A little bit of sick comes up in my mouth. The Winter Olympics are but days away, and the Team GB bobsleigh squad are on fine form. At the European Championships in Germany last week, they came away with a silver medal. And as 2014 marks the 90th year in which bobsleigh has featured as an Olympic sport, they will be particularly keen to excel. Traditionally, athletes transfer to the bobsleigh from disciplines such as sprinting or triple-jump. Many in the team serve in the Army, Navy or RAF, each of which trains up its own bobsleigh athletes for an annual interservices competition. Now, however, Team GB has launched a Talent ID programme and a Futures programme, both of which are designed to find potential bobsleigh talent among young people of different ages. Last year, more people tried out for the team than ever before. As we hurtle down the track, and the adrenalin flows, and the cold and chafing doesn’t seem to matter any more, I begin to see the appeal. “It’s all about the adrenalin,” says John Baines, 28, one of Team GB’s bobsleigh Olympians, whom I interview afterwards. “It definitely takes its toll on the body. At 90mph you can hit 6g on some corners, and then you can’t even breathe. Usually when we get to the bottom I have pain in my Watch Jake and Team Telegraph go downhill fast: telegraph.co.uk/video back, or my legs are cut up and bleeding from the spikes on my team-mates’ shoes. But we don’t use pads, because it would restrict our movement. All we want to do is win.” The track at Bath consists of a strip of concrete on which a pair of rails is mounted, and a set of elastic ropes at the end. The bobsleigh is fixed to the rails; as we clatter to the end of the track, the elastic ropes catch us and we dramatically slow down, feeling like our eyeballs are popping out. Then, gasping, we are catapulted backwards up the hill for another “slide”. On the one hand, a bobsleigh crew needs to learn to steer the speeding sled through the twists and turns. Team GB works on this aspect of the sport at full-sized courses overseas; it races abroad about 17 times a year. But the team also needs to be able to push the bobsleigh very fast, then jump in one by one. The latter skill is more difficult to master, and it is this that our Olympians practise obsessively, day in day out, on the track in Bath. We clamber out of the bob, panting and giggling like children. Then we look from one to the other. And we decide to go again. A bobsleigh athlete is a unique beast. He or she must have the explosive speed of a sprinter; the best teams can go from a standing start to 25mph in as little as three seconds. At the same time, however, he or she needs to be very strong and heavy. A bobsleigh team – both bob and athletes – must be within a certain combined weight range. The heavier the athletes, the lighter the bob can be, and the faster it can be pushed. “We do a lot of heavy lifting in the gym, and have to keep our calorie intake up,” says Baines. “It’s not glamorous,