Having won the Bronze medal at the 2018 Olympics in Skeleton, Laura Deas approached the new season with a huge amount of optimism and excitement. we caught up with her at the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton offices at Bath university before she headed off with the rest of the team for the North American leg of the World Cup.
Asked how her summer had been, Deas explained "It has been a really good summer in a lot of ways, creating a clean slate after Beijing and looking to the future with some exciting new things going on with the programme: New coaching and new equipment. These are all reasons to be positive about the future and a lot of my summer was around that.
"I had some serious rehab to do as well as I had a hip operation in May, so I was using rehab to get as strong as fast as possible to take some positive energy into the winter," Deas explained.
Skeleton has a really short active period and the pre-season training is spent mostly away from the tracks. With a burst of speed at the start and then jumping on the sled smoothly is the technical side of the sport. Britain is very lucky in that at Bath University they have a practice start facility and this becomes a home from home for the skeleton and bobsleigh team.
The love of pre-season
Deas loves pre season as all the hard work comes together and she gets the feel of why she does the sport.
"The push track here at Bath is very important to our programme," Deas explained, "It is the only thing that connects us directly to the sport that we do in the winter and it enables us to practice the all important first fifty metres: The push and the load."
Deas then explains that it is not the same as sliding "as anyone who has watched us on TV can see!"
"There is nothing like getting back on the ice and reacquainting yourself to the speed and the G-forces. I always have a moment when I am walking down the track and think 'can I remember how to do this?' Deas then smiles as she says "It always comes rushing back!"
Gravity plays a huge part in skeleton racing but there is still a lot to do to drive the sled. Deas describes how you drive a sled:
"The sled is essentially quite a flexible piece of equipment. You cannot necessarily see that with the naked eye. What you are doing is manipulating the internal metal parts of the sled by twisting the frame of the sled with your shoulders and knees.
"What that is doing is creating more or less friction on the runners underneath you which is the part that is in contact with the ice," she adds, "we use that in cognation with aerodynamics to drive ourselves down the track."
Is this Formula One on ice?
Deas smiles as she says, "Yes, why not!"
Is Deas a technical minded person or does she just want to go fast? "I love the technical stuff and like to get engrossed with it," she enthuses, "I have to really understand what is happening with my equipment to help me produce a good performance."
Deas feels that the better the athlete you become, the more information about this you can take on. "You are travelling at 30 metres a second, you are trying to do all these steers to keep yourself away from the wall, plus trying to work out what nuances the equipment is giving you. That all takes time. As I have gone through my career I have learnt to enjoy that side of things more and more."
What attracts Deas to the sport?
Is it the speed or working out how to make the equipment go faster? "It is really a combination of everything. It is a strange experience as in one sense it is full of technicality, nuance and small margins but on the other side it is fully about adrenaline, letting go and being in the moment and trying to find the balance between those two things."
Some athletes when they are standing on the start ramp can get hit by the onset of nerves and this affects performance. Deas enjoys the pressure "of you just have got to do it."
Deas is very much at home on her sled and relies on the sled to go fast. It is the constant search for improvement that keeps her coming back for more, she admits.
With the skeleton tracks all fixed tracks, the role of running a course through her head during the summer plays a big role. Big turns at the likes of Igls and its infamous Kreisel 270 degree banked turn can win or lose a run and playing the course multiple times during the summer is a key element in the summer training. "The mental side of our sport in incredibly important," Deas explains, "we use visualisation a lot."
Does Deas feel she has ever had that 'perfect run?
There are times that she has felt to have been in the perfect place but then it is on those runs that she can hardly remember the actual run she says.
With new tracks on the tour only happening every four years due to the Olympic cycle, this year sees the tour head back to North America for the first time in three years due to the Covid pandemic. Cortina is the next Olympic track that will be used for the 2026 Olympics and Deas has already been looking at old footage of the track from the 1981 World Championships and she had to tell them that "I do no think that it will look like this!"
With both skeleton and bobsleigh using the same tracks, Deas explains that "there are tracks that favour one discipline over another. the hardest for skeleton are those that are designed for luge," she explains, "So the likes of Königsee or Sigulda where you have really tight transitions one after another after another. A luge sled is much more flexible so they can steer and manipulate more easily than us and even more so than bobsleigh. Navigating those tight transitions can be really difficult."
With this in mind what is Deas favourite track? "That is a tough one," she explains, "I have to say St Moritz because it is like nowhere else, it is build from scratch every year, it is a different challenge every time you go, it has also got a lot of history surrounding it as well and it is the birthplace of the sport!"
Having viewed St Moritz many years ago, it is easy to understand Deas's feelings towards the St Moritz track, "It is a mile and a half that has been sculptured from ice, it is an incredible thing they do of the love of a crazy sport."
What inspired Deas to go into the sport?
Deas was selected through a talent ID programme and asked to try out for it. "After a couple of weeks training, a few of us were told, we think you could go on to win an Olympic medal if everything went right and you join our programme."
With this Deas's ears pricked up she admits as she has always had a passion for Olympic sport. "For someone with inside knowledge, that was all I needed to sign up and I think that is still the case today. People transfer from other sports as they see an opportunity to push on and find that elite level.
"That is why I love skeleton so much, there is more than one way to do it right so if you can push a sled fast and can learn quickly, it is a very open sport for people to get very good at."
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