Golden girl Amy returns World Cup action
Amy Williams, Britain’s 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 Britain’s 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 Sochi 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.
“It feels a little bit strange, my last run on the ice before I got here was at the Olympic Games,” she said today.
“I’ve had quite a chilled out week before the other competitors get here and I’m looking forward to competing again.
“Pushing on the ice feels a bit strange, but the slides are going well,” she said.
“I 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 don’t have huge expectations at this stage.
“Anything can happen and we will have to wait and see,” she added. “Igls is quite a slow track and the corners aren’t huge, but it’s also very hard to find those extra 10ths of a second, so it can also be quite frustrating.“
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 Britain’s skeleton programme as well as boasting £30million in world-class sports facilities which are backed by cutting edge sports support services.
For further information please contact the TeamBath press office at Matchtight Ltd on 01225 383518 or 07765 071683.
