In sports which are decided by the tiniest of margins, fractions of a second separating first from 10th, how do you eke out an advantage?
‘Marginal gains’ may be the byword in cycling but the concept applies equally to the high-octane world of winter sports, where technological innovation – from aerodynamic kits to state-of-the-art sleds – rules the day.
So much so that the battle to get ahead in sports like skeleton and bobsleigh has become something of a Cold War, according to Dr Kate Baker, UK Sport’s director of performance.
Baker told The Independent and other outlets on the eve of the Games: “It isn’t quite to the extent of hiding in bushes to spy on other teams, but espionage between nations is very real. It’s big business for some people, and we know how powerful sporting success is for a nation.
“We are an extraordinary nation in the way that we have consistently punched above our weight. Everyone wants to know what we’re doing. The challenge for us as Great Britain is to evolve again and do something different and surprise everybody.”
Baker was full of confidence in Britain’s current crop of Winter Olympians, with skeleton’s reigning world and World Cup champion Matt Weston and teammate Marcus Wyatt among a number of serious medal contenders.
But she was coy about the technical changes that have been made since Beijing 2022, when much-vaunted advancements fell flat and Britain walked away without a skeleton medal for the first and only time at a Games the sport has featured in. Britain has no sliding track, only a push-track in Bath, and the Covid-19 pandemic was a “fundamental constraint” on performance.
Things are very different now. Baker said: “I’m not saying there’s going to be an enormous new rabbit pulled out of a hat, but I think we can be quietly confident about the work that’s been happening over the cycle.”
One major change is that the British skeleton and bobsleigh programmes are now integrated under the leadership of performance director Natalia Dunman. The GB squad also has its own wind tunnel, at a secret location somewhere in Manchester, aiming to replicate the well-documented rewards wind testing has brought for British Cycling.
The personnel involved, and UK Sport’s position as a funding body for each sport, are also major assets. Baker said: “If you spend any time hanging around any of our sports, you will see that they are constantly looking at what everybody else is doing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s an arms race.
“It is definitely an expertise race though, and our ability to spot things and opportunities and get on quickly is a super strength of Great Britain. Our ability as UK Sport to work with a sport [national body], identify an opportunity and get onto it quickly, fund it in an agile manner and get after it has given us a real competitive advantage. We have a safe to fail approach: have a go, if it doesn’t work, rapidly iterate. And that’s been a real step on for us, particularly in the winter sports space this cycle.”
She cited the new mixed team event, which is making its debut in Milano-Cortina, as an area where GB quickly spotted potential to get ahead. Unlike in a regular skeleton race, which allows athletes a set period of time to sprint to the first timing wand, the mixed event features a Formula One-style countdown to a green light. “It’s a fundamentally different skill set that the athletes will require. We spotted it. We got on it early, we invested, and we’ve built some systems that are enabling them to capitalise on that.”
But one of the pitfalls of technological advancement is how often it skirts the line of legality in sport, and one of GB’s recent changes may never get off the ground.
The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association (BBSA) appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) on Wednesday over a ban on a new helmet it intends to use in Cortina.
The International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) ruled that the helmet – which was trialled for the first time in training last week – does not comply with regulations, leaving the BBSA facing a nervy wait before the competition starts. It’s a different helmet to the one which GB athletes have used to great success throughout this season, but could give them an extra edge over the likes of long-term rivals Germany, if Cas overrules the IBSF.
But bringing that “rabbit out of a hat”, so to speak, has its risks: Baker alluded to the fact previously, but GB have evidently decided the risk is worth the potential reward.
“Yes, sending someone off with the very best setup is good,” she said. “It’s not nearly as good as having somebody who is totally in tune with that setup. Historically you could turn up at the Games and pull out a totally brand-new kit setup, send the athletes out on it, and they suddenly find seconds. You just can’t do that anymore.
“The athletes hate it, as you would imagine, the last thing they’re going to want is for you to go, ‘hang on, you can have the normal [set-up], we’re saving this for another day’. But the other thing is that as the performance standards get higher and higher, that interaction between athlete and kit is so critical, and learning that and having time to adapt to it is really important.” Other nations with sliding tracks are able to test new things more easily “behind closed doors”, but it’s still risky.
Throughout our conversation Baker was wary of saying anything too revealing: “You will notice that we’ve not been talking openly about what we’ve been doing for the last 18 months. We are working incredibly hard to create another step change for our nation – and we should talk about that another time!”
Skullduggery and espionage in bobsleigh and skeleton has been in the headlines several times recently, with an American skater accusing a Canadian coach of deliberately pulling athletes from a qualifying race to prevent any rivals gaining a place at the Olympics. Then there’s snooping at competitions themselves.
Baker said: “I’m not aware of anyone being caught in the bushes around the push track in Bath. But there’s a reality that when those athletes are competing on the World Cup circuit, if you look at that starting area, all of the sleds have to be lined up against each other. Everybody can see everything. There is real rigorous inspection.
“We’ve been caught in previous Games where someone, another nation usually, has said, ‘hang on a minute, they’re doing something interesting over there, we want that pulled into the marshal’s office’, and then ensues some kind of investigation. [In the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang other teams objected to GB’s aerodynamic skinsuits, but they were granted IBSF approval.] That’s much harder for anything like that to happen now, they can all see the kit that everybody else is using.
“There’s stuff you can’t see with the naked eye and so everyone will be making guesses about what’s going on. But to my knowledge, there’s none of that kind of All Blacks nonsense of videos in the changing rooms and drones over training!” Maybe not yet – but if GB impress in Cortina, that may be the next step.
