Find our all the latest bobsleigh news and gossip right here.
|
Happy Snapping with Edward Miller23rd October 2011 Working with Edward Miller is always such a pleasure! Ed found some great locations around Sheffield to take photographs of the bobsleigh and I. The hardest part was moving the bobsleigh on location but with the aid of an industrial clothing rail on wheels and a few young mountain bikers who were riding by, we soon had the bobsleigh in position and looking good for the camera. ...Read More |
|
Showing Off My Sleigh20th October 2011 This week is flying by at a rapid pace as things start to come together before heading off to Europe. I picked up my bobsleigh from Bath early in the week and one of my first stops was 3M who are kindly sponsoring the GB Team with sandpaper - a series of special abrasives that we use to polish our ’runners’ with. Nigel Willcock looked after me and showed me around the factory where the sandpaper was being produced. It was really interesting! Rolls of paper 2km in length were passing by, being coated with resin and then electromagnetic forces were used to attract the sand towards the sticky resin to produce an even coat of abras ... |
|
Inspiring Youngsters in South Yorkshire16th October 2011 The early part of this week was spent with local school children in Anston Infant School, Rotherham and my old primary school, St. Helen’s in Hoyland, Barnsley. My visit to St. Helen’s was fantastic - it was really lovely to see my old teachers again and the very well behaved, polite children there. I took in some bobsleigh equipment to show them and the questions & stories kept on rolling in - an inquisitive bunch! After break-time three budding child producers created a video with me that will be shown in the first exhibition in the new museum ’Experience Barnsley’ due to open in the town hall in summer 2012. ... |
|
Slick on Sigulda Ice26th September 2011 The past week was spent in the lovely small town of Sigulda in Latvia. It was a great week of testing push combinations on ice - really refreshing to put on my ice spikes again after a long summer of training. For five days we all pushed hard and Nikki and I were rewarded with the weeks’ fastest double push on the last day on ice. I found time to relax on our day off by going out fungus foyaying with some of Latvias leading mycologists in the local forests - our amazing finds went on display in the Natural Museum in Riga. A spot of ten-pin bowling didn’t go amiss either and the punch machine also provided many moments of en ... |
|
Training in Texas @ MJP31st July 2011 I have been training with the GB squad in Texas for ten days at the Michael Johnson Performance Centre - training was soley focussed on developing speed and sprint technique - any tips from Michael, 4 x Olympic gold medallist, will always be welcome! I learned so much in a short space of time there. After a few days of light training back in the UK, we headed to Loughborough for a speed camp with Michael Khmel, our new sprint coach, who also coaches some of Britain’s top sprinters. Check out the Gallery section to see more photos from Texas. ...Read More |
|
Bavaria Welcomes the World21st Febrary 2011 What a fantastic opportunity this was to be competing in my first major championship in my first year of driving. We had a few days of training before official World Championship training week began in Königssee – it was a good job because I was finding the S-bends particularly tricky so the extra track time was very welcome! Gill was my brakewoman for the races and we pushed consistently on all three of o ... |
|
Crazy Cesana – the last World Cup race of the season14th February 2011 After coming from St. Moritz’s lovely smooth and free driving lines to Cesana, rough and busy, was like jumping from a hot bath into cold bath! The first two days of training were a shock to the system (and to my brakewomen!) and it really did feel like I’d not driven here before! On the second day, I enjoyed a solo trip backwards down the braking straight and around the last few corners - courtesy of Gillian who had a minor problem bringing the bob to a stop. By the third day of training I was taking to the rhythm of the track, getting to grips with the driving lines and getting down with fewer and fewer more ‘interesting lin ... |
|
Zwei Wochen in St. Moritz2nd February 2011 Our two weeks here were for Europa Cup races 7 & 8 and World Cup race 7. What a fantastic track to drive. It is like no other as it is the only track in the world that is made out of compacted snow and ice each year. I was lucky to bump into one of the guys who helped to make it so I enjoyed getting inside information on how it was done! The track is smooth and quiet and so beautiful as it winds its way through the woods. Driving the track is tricky in places as on all tracks but the great things about here is that less is definitely more. Any hard steers made here ... |
|
Uber Focus in Winterberg9th December 2010 This week, out of all the weeks on circuit so far, was definately the most challenging for me in a really good way. The first eight corners are steady and not too technical - which means that any mistakes made here will cost any driver a lot of time. It was a brilliant opportunity to feel the pressures through the D-rings and then to respond with small controlling movements/steers. Things begin to get interesting at corner 9 - which proved very tricky for both novices and experienced drivers alike...there were over 60 crashes just in the training sessions alone! Corner 9 is a tricky double pressure corner which means drivers need to control the pressure point ... |
|
Conquering Cesana26th November 2010 New track to learn – little time to do it! Cesana’s bob track has nineteen corners and is faster and more technical that the track in Igls. We began our training with three runs from corner 5, successfully navigating the tricky double pressure corner 14. On day two it was crunch time and I made the decision to go from the top even though I was barley ready, but race day was only two days away! We made it down safely and in total we made five clean runs before competing the day after. On race day, we reached speeds of almost 75mph and finished in 16th |
|
Racing Gets Underway in Igls20th November 2010 With GB coach Lee Johnston now with the team, our first race week was composed of six training runs over three days and then races 1 and 2 of the European Cup. Training went well despite 50% of our runs ended up in crashes. Yes, quite a high percentage but, as Coach Johnston had been pointing out all along, I soon realised that I had not been steering enough! Travelling upside down took its toll on Faye and come race day, Julia Hubbard was picked to step up to be brakewoman for the day and boy was she up for it! Julia last competed in 2009 and despite her time out of the sport and our no ... |
|
At School in Igls13th November 2010 It has been a fantastic week on ice in Igls, Austria learning the ropes of the 14 corners here with some great coaches to guide us. I have driven my first ’kreisel’ (German word for a corner that is between 270 and 320 degrees - like a big loop!) with varying, but successful driving lines! Before each training run, the coaches would walk up the track with all the learner drivers and talk through what actions we should be making on each of the corners. I try to cement these actions into my head by visualising each corner in turn and matching them with the correct hands movements. To many on-lookers, it can be quite strange to s ... |
|
Driving Seat!!2nd October 2010 Thanks for coming to read my first entry into the ‘bob blog’! I hope that you are enjoying our new website, even though parts of it are still under construction. After spending three weeks on ice in March at ‘bob school’ in Lake Placid, USA, I decided that I definitely wanted to be a driver. Lake Placid holds one of the most technical tracks in the world, so it was a difficult and fantastic challenge for a novice to take to – and we often ended up upside down! The very first time in the front seat was like driving into a white hole instead of a black one, like an intergalactic tube of ice racing past my ears.&n ... |
[1]