Hopefuls out to spring surprise
By Andrew Baker 
(Filed: 21/10/2005)

The nights are drawing in, and Britain's winter sports squads are sniffing the cooler air with greater than usual anticipation. Not far into the new year the Winter Olympics will be held in and around Turin in Italy, and the nation's athletes will be hoping to improve on the medal score achieved by Team GB in Salt Lake City four years ago.

The British heroines in the mountains of the American MidWest were Alex Coomber, the RAF officer who took a bronze medal in the first women's skeleton bobsleigh event, and Rhona Martin and her curling team, who kept more than five million people glued to their televisions back home as they secured the gold medal.

Alain Baxter won bronze on the final weekend in the men's slalom, but was subsequently stripped of his medal, having used the wrong kind of nasal inhaler to clear his breathing.

Coomber has retired, but Martin and Baxter are among the dozens of British athletes scrapping for places in the team for Turin. Curling and bob skeleton remain among the strongest of our national disciplines, but new talents in existing sports and promising exponents in new sports have emerged to bolster the challenge.

Team GB have qualified two squads for the curling competition in Turin, where only the top nine men's and women's teams from the world's 50 curling nations will be allowed to compete. But the individuals who will make up the British squad will not be identified until after the European Championships in December.

The Olympic head coach for curling, Mike Hay, is diplomatically reluctant to name those who might take part, but is confident that those eventually selected will do the nation proud. "Hopefully we'll put two competitive teams on the ice," Hay said. "Our target is to win a medal, and rightly so, because we have been well supported since Salt Lake City."

Britain's bob skeleton and bobsleigh squads have also been thriving at their base at the University of Bath, where, despite the lack of snow, the athletes have benefited from frequent workouts on the "push-start" course, a concrete mini-mountain that allows them to practice the most important part of any descent, the opening sprint.

Kristan Bromley, who was 13th in Salt Lake City, and who designs bob skeletons as well as piloting them, finished fourth in the World Championships earlier this year. The obvious heiresses to Coomber are Shelley Rudman and Amy Williams, respectively first and second at the World University Games in January. In the full-size bobsleighs, Britain's best hopes are Nicola Minichello and Jackie Davies, who finished second in this year's World Championships.

On the ski slopes, the versatile Chemmy Alcott, practically a one-woman team, will be hoping to challenge for at least top-10 places across a variety of disciplines, while Finlay Mickel has been showing promising form in men's downhill events. Baxter's form has been disappointing, but together with brother, Noel, he will be hoping to force his way into contention for a place in Turin.

Snowboarding is a fickle discipline, in part because the competitors get on so well together that they are as happy to applaud their opponents as beat them. But after a disappointing performance in Salt Lake City, Lesley McKenna will be keen to make amends in the half-pipe event. Snowboardcross is a discipline new to the Winter Olympics, in which competitors race four abreast down a slalom course. Zoe Gillings, from the Isle of Man, is ranked fourth in the world and considered one of Britain's brightest medal prospects for Turin.

The British Olympic Association are committed to the task of constant improvement, and will be hoping to better the tally from Utah four years ago. While the British squad lack a competitor with the solid pre-Games form of Coomber, there are plenty of athletes with the potential to spring a surprise. After all, few expected a medal from Rhona Martin.