Lizzy Yarnold stands on top of the sporting mountain — the Olympic, European and now world champion after victory in Winterberg, Germany — a combination that no other skeleton athlete has managed before.
While her 2014-15 season was studded with medals and wins, it was not without its challenges. A bout of severe dizziness after a race in December meant that she missed one round of the World Cup and the hangover from an Olympic win is a mixed bag of emotions for any athlete and can last longer than many might consider logical. But Yarnold has been able to put aside the gloss and gossip in Germany and focus on the narrow strip of ice that she must conquer.
Her main competitors have changed dramatically since Sochi. A new draft of young athletes has flooded in and when Elena Nikitina, the Russian 2014 Olympic bronze medal-winner, failed to get on her sled completely in the first run it seemed as if Yarnold would have it all her own way.
But Jane Channell and Elisabeth Vathje, two Canadians, challenged her for the first two runs leaving her with a narrow 0.07sec advantage overnight.
If it bothered Yarnold it didn’t show and a fine third run left her nearly half a second in the lead as the field was narrowed to the top 20 for the last run. Yarnold seems impervious to the pressure and her fourth run was, yet again, faster than any of her opponents could manage. They may have learnt a lot in racing against her, but for the time being she is still the most consistent in the field, which will leave them on the final slope up to the summit, but not pushing her off it just yet.
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Yarnold remains tight-lipped about her long-term plans. Three long winters stand between her and the next Olympics, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and the coming weeks will see her take a holiday and take stock. She may decide to step back, but another gold would leave her as the best skeleton athlete ever, the most successful British Winter Olympian and possibly the first British woman to win two Olympic golds, summer or winter, in the same event — a trio of accolades that she decides are worth the effort.
Whatever her decision Britain’s women sliders depart Germany with a claim to being the world’s best, with Yarnold’s win being bolstered by Laura Deas and Rose McGrandle, who were seventh and ninth respectively.
If women’s skeleton is busy building a decade-long dynasty of success, then the men’s bobsleigh has been rebuilding since Sochi. The lead pilot then for Britain was John Jackson and he is still absent, in part recovering from injury.
Lamin Deen has taken over the controls of the British four-man bobsleigh. Deen drove beautifully all weekend — and with some of the fastest starts of the competition delivered from his crew of Ben Simons, Bruce Tasker and Andrew Matthews, they finished an encouraging fifth, with three German bobs on their home track ahead of them.
A medal is still a significant step away but that step looks lower than it has for years. It is another sliding event where Team GB continue to defy the odds of our temperate climate by going toe to toe with the traditional winter giants.