A Steer from

Amy Williams

You can never get too much advice when

you’re trying out something new, providing

that your advice comes from people who

know what they’re talking about, and

Olympic Gold Medallist Amy Williams

certainly knows her stuff.

MY is an athlete who started out as a

runner, competing in the 400 metres

event. She was good, too, but was

slightly off the pace when it came to making it

into the national team. Then she was

introduced to the skeleton bob, and she never

looked back. Don’t say it, I know, you have to

keep looking forward on those things. At the

2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver Amy won

her gold medal – the only medal that came

home to Britain from Canada.

A

Amy had a look over the sled. It wasn’t a patch
on the Blackroc skeleton that she had raced in
Vancouver. That had been designed by a team
at Southampton University led by engineers
Rachel Blackburn and James Roche, which
is where the Blackroc Project got its name,
although the actual sled was called Arthur.

The Blackroc team, with the help of our guys

from Sheffield Hallam, had spent four years

designing, building, testing and refining Arthur.

We didn’t have anything like that sort of time to

play with and, in any case, we were going to be

running on snow, not on the ice of a bobsleigh

track. Amy could see where we were coming

from and gave the vinyl seat a prod. When she

lay on Arthur, he was specially formed to mould

to the contours of her body. If anything, our

supersled prototype looked a bit too comfy!

234    world’s fastest sled

Above: Olympic Skeleton Bob Gold Medal winner

Amy Williams gave me a few tips about hurtling down

a slope head first.

Amy had me lie on a bench and got me

balancing on my torso so that I could feel how

best to shift my weight. She steered Arthur

by pressing down with one shoulder and the

opposite knee to get the right sort of shift in

weight. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have

to steer at all, but if course corrections were

needed I was picking up plenty of tips on

technique. We chatted for a while about her

sport and how she had been terrified when

she first tried the skeleton, but that and the

thrill of the speed were what got her hooked.

In Vancouver she was hitting 90 mph on

Arthur during her gold medal run and wore