From Bath University: Hall, the men’s GBR1 two-man and four-man pilot, and his crew have been training tirelessly at the University of Bath since April as they look to build on a historic Olympiad which has seen GB win their first World Championships medals since 1939 and be crowned European Champions for the first time.
“We’ve got a lot of expectation going into this season because we’ve had three great years,” said Hall, already a double Olympian. “We’ve won European Championships, countless World Cup medals, World Championship medals, World Cup overall globes – the success has been phenomenal.
“The ambitions for this season are to win medals in pretty much every World Cup race and then finish off with two Olympic medals. It’s not plain sailing, there is a lot of work to do between now and then, but we’re up for the challenge.”
Team Hall begin their IBSF World Cup campaign this weekend (22&23 November) on the track where they will end the season, the Eugenio Monti Olympic Sliding Centre which hosts the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games in February.
Pinpointing the reasons for Britain’s recent success in the sport, Hall said: “Our programme isn’t on the same scale as Germany’s, so we’ve got to be very specific with what we focus on. I’m turning over every stone, looking at every single element of our performance and trying to optimise that. That’s what we’ve done very well over the last few years.”
He also praised the camaraderie within the men’s bobsleigh team, a view supported by brakeman Leon Greenwood who is targeting his first Olympic Games.
“We’re like brothers,” he said. “We spend so much time together – we go on family days, we go to weddings and baby showers. Bobsleigh is a one-minute run but it’s what we do outside of that which makes us better.
“We’ve had a really positive summer of training here in Bath. We get faster at pushing, we get stronger, we get the synchronisation, the loading velocity, we get all that right so when we go onto the ice, it’s just sweet and it’s slick. We’re literally like ninjas getting in the sled.”
The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association athletes have been training in Italy for the past couple of weeks and, apart from a short Christmas break, are now on the World Cup circuit through to mid-January.
“I’ve got a one-year-old daughter at home, so the biggest challenge for me is being away from her and my family for so long,” said Greenwood. “This needs to be worth it and that means I need to become an Olympian, so my eyes are set on that.”
Visit thebbsa.com/bobsleigh and teambath.com/bobsleigh to find out more about the British Bobsleigh programme based at the University of Bath, a UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centre.
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