From sports shop to the Olympics: London's version of Cool Runnings

Matthew Beard, Olympics Editor
26 Oct 2009

Vicky Olaoye's career in top-flight sport is going downhill fast.

The 25-year-old former sports shop worker from Islington has been fast-tracked to compete for Britain at the Winter Olympics in the bob skeleton.

Although she only took up the sport a year ago, she has been tipped as a potential medallist in the white-knuckle event, in which the sled hurtles down an icy run at up to 60mph.

Her story echoes Cool Runnings, the 1993 comedy film loosely based on the story of the Jamaican bobsleigh team, which made a debut at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Olaoye's sporting adventure began last year when she was invited to try out for a range of Olympic sports under the state-sponsored "Girls4Gold" scheme to tap potential among female athletes.

She failed to make the grade at track cycling, but was snapped up by bob skeleton coaches.

She hopes to emulate Shelley Rudman, who became the only British success of the 2006 Winter Olympics when she won a silver medal in bob skeleton three years after taking up the sport.

Britain does not have an ice facility, so the team uses a concrete dry run at its Bath University training base.

Olaoye, who has given up her job in an Oxford Street sportswear store, divides her time between Bath and Lillehammer, Norway.

After a nerve-racking induction to bob skeleton, former sprinter Olaoye admits to having become an adrenaline junkie.

She said: "The first time I went down it was so scary but the fear gives way and you get the rush to keep getting better. I'm pretty fast in the push phase but it's all about learning how to steer better on the ice track.

"I didn't know anything about the sport a year ago but it intrigues me. My mates are a bit puzzled."

Olaoye's coach Mark Wood rates her as a medal contender for the 2014 Winter Games, in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi. He said: "I would be extremely disappointed if Vicky wasn't in the mix."