- UK Sport Investment 2010-14 (Sochi) - £3,447,600
- UK Sport Investment 2006-10 (Vancouver) - £2,100,000
- Number of Podium Funded Athletes - 3: Shelley Rudman*, Lizzy Yarnold*, Dominic Parsons*
- Number of Podium Potential Funded Athletes - 12: Kristan Bromley*, Donna Creighton, Laura Deas, James Howard, Kenny Howard, Rose McGrandle, Jordan McIntosh, Jeremy Rice, Ed Smith, David Swift, Jack Thomas, Thomas Walker
- Sochi Performance Target - 1 Medal
*Selected for Sochi
The Sochi Journey
Having medalled at each of the past three Olympic Winter Games, progressing from Alex Coomber’s bronze at Salt Lake City, to Shelley Rudman’s silver in Turin, culminating in the fantastic gold medal won by Amy Williams in Vancouver, British Skeleton has been a sport in ascendance for a decade.
As such, skeleton receives the most funding of all the winter sports, and have benefitted from £3.4 million of National Lottery and Exchequer investment from UK Sport to support their Sochi journey.
With their proven track record of success and the backing of UK Sport, British Skeleton was keen to increase its talent pool for the future. Talent ID campaigns run by UK Sport and the English Institute of Sport in 2008 (Girls4Gold) and 2011 (Power2Podium) discovered a number of promising young athletes, meaning that in 2012-13, 12 new athletes joined the World Class Programme.
Among these athletes was Lizzy Yarnold, a county level heptathlete who tried out for Girls4Gold having never even heard of skeleton. Just four years later, in 2012, Yarnold became Junior World Champion and a Senior World Bronze Medallist. Yarnold is now a Podium funded athlete and was the 2013-14 overall World Cup champion.
Skeleton power couple Shelley Rudman and Kristan Bromley have been on the World Class Performance Programme for a combined 20 years, having both won World Championship and World Cup titles during their incredibly successful time in the sport.
The ‘team behind the team’ is also of vital importance and Ice Coach Chris Type is currently on UK Sport’s Elite Coach Apprenticeship Programme (ECAP), which aims to create a bespoke development pathway towards coaching excellence, based on the needs of each coach and their sport.
A former skeleton athlete, Chris also went on to be the first ever pilot for Athlete to Coach – which led to a new UK Sport initiative looking for athletes to transfer in to coaching at the end of their competitive career.
Fellow Ice Coach Mark Wood, who helped Lizzy Yarnold and other talent transfer athletes get integrated in to Skeleton’s World Class Programme, is a graduate of UK Sport’s Elite Coach programme.