Amy Williams, Britain¹s Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games golden girl,
returns to action on the ice for the first time since winning her skeleton
gold medal next Friday (14 January).
The University of Bath Sports Performance graduate won Britain¹s first
Olympic Winter Games individual gold medal for 30 years when she stormed to
victory in the skeleton at Vancouver on 20 February last year.
She delayed her start to the 2010/11 skeleton season as part of her
preparations to be in the best possible shape in the lead up to the Socchi
2014 Games.
Amy returns to action in the fifth skeleton World Cup of the season at the
Igls track in Austria on 14 January.
She has been training through the winter at her University of Bath training
base, home to the British Skeleton programme, and had some practice runs at
Igls earlier this week her first time on the ice since she slid to Olympic
glory just under a year ago.
³It feels a little bit strange, my last run on the ice before I got here was
at the Olympic Games,² she said today.
³I¹ve had quite a chilled out week before the other competitors get here and
I¹m looking forward to competing again.
³Pushing on the ice feels a bit strange, but the slides are going well,² she
said.
³I always want to do the best I can, but I have to remember that everyone
else has been competing for three months. The first week of the season is
always the hardest to adapt to, so I don¹t have huge expectations at this
stage.
³Anything can happen and we will have to wait and see,² she added. ³Igls is
quite a slow track and the corners aren¹t huge, but it¹s also very hard to
find those extra 10ths of a second, so it can also be quite frustrating.³
Amy was made an MBE for Services to Sport following her gold-medal winning
performance at Vancouver and became only the fifth person since the Second
World War to be made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bath.
The 28-year-old also featured on the shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of
the Year award.
The University of Bath has a skeleton push-start track and it is the
headquarters of Britain¹s skeleton programme as well as boasting £30million
in world-class sports facilities which are backed by cutting edge sports
support services.
