Winter Olympics: Lizzy Yarnold and Laura Deas on Pyeongchang hopes

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British skeleton athlete Lizzy YarnoldImage source, Getty Images
Image caption,

Lizzy Yarnold took gold in Sochi in 2014 with a winning margin of 0.97 seconds

When Lizzy Yarnold stepped on to the ice for her first skeleton run at the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, she thought she would get a reception "like Jess Ennis" did two years earlier in London.

Britain's Ennis, the face of the 2012 Olympics, was roared on by 80,000 fans as she lived up to her billing as favourite and won heptathlon gold.

Yarnold, having won the 2014 skeleton World Cup, was among the favourites for gold in Russia but her welcome was quite different.

"I thought there would be thousands of people and they'd be shouting 'Lizzy, Lizzy'," the Briton told BBC Sport.

"It was silent, no-one was there, it was just me and my coach and I thought, 'I'll just get on with it then'.

"But it's still the ice, the sled and me - it's just me doing my best."

Yarnold, 29, will represent Team GB in the skeleton in Pyeongchang next month, when she will try to become the first British Winter Olympian to retain a title.

She will be joined in South Korea by Laura Deas, also 29, who will make her first appearance at a Winter Olympics, while Dom Parsons and Jerry Rice will race for Britain in the men's event.

BBC Sport caught up with Yarnold and Deas before they travel to the Games next week.

The nerves and excitement

Yarnold is competing in her second Winter Olympics.

"It's the exciting point now- we've got the kit, we can wear the flag. It's real. You're not just doing it for yourself, but the Olympics is about you, your nation and your family," she said.

"The experience helps - and I hate to say four years older - but I have been there, I know what it looks like and I know what it sounds like."

It is first time round for Deas, who ended this season seventh in the overall World Cup rankings.

"I'm nervous because I want to represent my country well.

"It's a much bigger stage, we're all wearing different kit, but it's the same field of athletes that we compete against week in, week out on the World Cup circuit and I know they will be going through the same feelings of nervousness and excitement.

"It's nice to have had a consistent season but now I am looking to push on and win a medal so I'm wanting to make that step up."

Fearsome but fun

Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,

Laura Deas has finished outside the top 12 in just one of the eight World Cup races this season

Deas took up the sport in 2009 as part of a UK Sport talent programme, after a professional equestrian career in eventing. She was hooked on skeleton almost immediately.

"We'd been in the process of being selected for months, and yet we hadn't actually done the sport yet," she said. "So there was this difficult experience, because you were so desperate to be selected and at the same time you had this massive challenge of sliding down this fearsome ice track that you'd never seen before.

"It was really clear quite quickly that some people did not like it at all, they did not like the sensation and they were like 'it's not for me, I'm going home'.

"But for the likes of me and Lizzy, we learned to love it, maybe not on the first couple of runs, but it's such an addictive sport, you've got the adrenaline, you've got so many things to think about at once.

"I don't think you ever have the perfect run. It might look perfect, but there'll always be something that you could have done better and that's what makes it such an addictive sport."

Yarnold, who followed her Olympic title by winning the World Championship in 2015, took a year out of the sport before returning in 2016-17 to prepare for Pyeongchang.

Her comeback season was, she admits, "up and down" but she finished the season in the top 10 in the World Cup rankings and won world bronze.

And in last year's Winter Olympics taster at the South Korean track, Yarnold finished fourth, just four hundredths of a second adrift of bronze.

"I know if I hadn't taken that year off I wouldn't be sitting here now," she said.

"It was an essential break, the Olympics is a mammoth amount of work, not just for myself but for the whole team so it's important to decompress and go at it again.

"My favourite time has been going into schools. You can tell people what you do every day and show them your medals and to see that exhilaration in kids' eyes, it reminds you why you do it.

"Even though it's a tremendous amount of hard work, it is fun."

Media caption,

Yarnold wins bronze at Skeleton Worlds

Focus is on own performance, not Russia

Yarnold has always been outspoken about her concerns over doping in the sport and she welcomes the decision by the International Olympic Committee to allow clean athletes from Russia to compete under a neutral flag.

She said: "It is something that I've been waiting years for, that we have clean athletes competing and that the IOC continue to protect clean athletes and those Olympic values that I love to compete under - that we hold them dear and keep them close to our hearts."

Deas missed out on a bronze at the European Championship, in a competition won by Russian athlete Elena Nikitina, who is banned from competing in the Olympics for breaching anti-doping rules at Sochi.

But she refuses to let the disappointment affect her focus this time.

"As an athlete, once you're there and in that competition environment, whoever is there on the day is your competition.

"We've got so much to think about in terms of focusing our own performance, in a lot of ways it's counterproductive to be worrying overly about the overriding politics of things because it's going to end up detracting from your own performance. I know I can influence it by performing really well on the track.

"It is frustrating for sure to know that things could have been different, but that was my competition on the day whether I liked it or not, so I had to accept the situation."

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