BALD is no longer beautiful in the world of skeleton bobsleigh since Zach Lund, the World Cup leader, failed a drugs test and blamed his hair restorer, but what does Kristan Bromley care? He has always tended towards the hirsute. In an unusual marriage of athlete and sponsor, the Briton’s main backer makes shaving products while the slider continues to sport a goatee.
The sponsorship is based not on Bromley ensuring that he starts every morning with razor in hand but on his place at the “cutting edge” of blade technology. Not only is Bromley one of Great Britain’s few hopes for a medal at the Winter Olympics in Turin next month, he is an engineer who takes a scientific approach to his sport.
Bromley took up skeleton only after being asked, in the days when he worked for British Aerospace, to help the British Bob Skeleton Association with sled design. Believing that the best way to check his work was to test it personally, he set off for a track in Altenberg, Germany, and was hooked.
That was 12 years ago and, although no slider has a better understanding of the science of skeleton, Bromley appreciates that, in Britain, his sport is little understood. It is portrayed largely as a thrill ride on a teatray, as a madman’s hobby, with no opportunity to have a go as the nation possesses not a single track.
If he is to win a medal in Turin, Bromley would like people at home to have a better feel for what he has achieved and his sponsor, King of Shaves, has come up with the answer. With a prize for the winner of a trip to Turin to watch the Olympic skeleton competition, an online challenge, in which allcomers are invited to race down a track, has been devised.
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“It gives a basic understanding of what skeleton is about,” Richard Bromley, Kristan’s brother, coach and support technician, said. There is a choice of tracks and, for the purpose of the game, the Turin Olympic course is described as “easy”. When it comes to the real thing, though, Bromley knows better. “It will be one of the faster tracks, 125 to 130km/h, 19 corners, with a lot going on, ” Bromley said.
“Everything is so technical, you do not get time to think.” All his thinking has to be done in advance, which is why Bromley is sitting out a World Cup race today for the first time this season, in St Moritz, Switzerland.
Bromley’s voluntary absence will cost him his chance to regain the World Cup title and, with the European Championships in conjunction, a potential third successive continental title. Fourth in the World Cup standings, Bromley is effectively third while Lund, from the United States, who has dropped to second place since his positive test last month, is suspended pending an investigation.
The thinking is that, by resting now, Bromley will not be jaded come Turin. He will return for the last race, in Altenberg, hoping that, at the venue where he clinched the World Cup two seasons ago and won the European title last year, he can leave for the Olympics with confidence high. Bromley has also done some rethinking. In 2004 and 2005, he indicated that he would retire after the Games, at 33. But he has looked around and seen a few greybeards: Jeff Pain, from Canada, the World Cup leader, is 35, while Gregor Staehli, from Switzerland, and Duff Gibson, from Canada, second and third behind Pain in the World Championships last year, are, respectively, 37 and 39.
“I am considering the next four years,” Bromley said. “I will wait until after the Games but I feel as though I am not there with my potential yet.”
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At 1.80 metres (5ft 9in) and 88 kilogrammes (13st 7lb), Pain was outpunching the 1.78m, 72kg Bromley last season. “I have put on 10kg in the last year to get power in my legs for the short start in Turin,” the Briton said. Skeleton races are won and lost by hundredths of a second, but Bromley will not mind how small the margin is in Turin. So long as he emerges as the king of close shaves.