Australian skeleton athletes on track for 2010 Winter Olympics

Close up of Lucy Chaffer riding skeleton sled

Australian Institute of Sport skeleton athlete Lucy Chaffer in training at the Phillip ice-skating rink in Canberra.

29 Sep 2009

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) skeleton squad of Olympian Michelle Steele, Lucy Chaffer, Melissa Hoar and Emma Lincoln-Smith, has been training hard through September at the AIS in Canberra, in preparation to qualify for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

The athletes have been training to vie for selection through eight rounds of the 2009–10 Intersport FIBT World Cup and FIBT Intercontinental Cup series. The top two ranked skeleton nations after the World Cup will qualify three athletes for the Winter Olympics. Nations ranked three–six will qualify two athletes and nations in the top eight will qualify at least one. Australia expects to qualify two athletes.

Training has been especially intense for the squad as the sport demands so much: skeleton athletes need to combine explosive and fast sprinting with the high speed precision steering of a Formula One driver, as they slide, head first, on boogie board-sized sleds along a 1200m ice track pulling up to five Gs at speeds of more than 130km a hour.

There is currently no bobsled track in the Southern Hemisphere, so the athletes have been training using challenging simulations, including investing significant time into practising starts on the AIS Biomechanics running track and treadmill, as well as at a local ice-skating rink.

The athletes have also been working with skill acquisition specialist Tara Handke on complicated driving steers, through analysis of video recorded by a sled-mounted camera, on each of the tracks that they will compete on later this year. Experts in AIS Strength and Conditioning, Physiology, Physical Therapies and Sports Medicine have also helped finetune the athletes’ bodies for skeleton’s physical and mentally demanding environment.

One of the strongest medal hopefuls in the AIS squad is Queenslander Michelle Steele who, after switching from beach sprinting and 400m running to skeleton racing, became the first Australian to compete in the women’s skeleton event at the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics and finished, incredibly, in thirteenth place.

Steele took up skeleton in 2004 through the Australian Sports Commission’s National Talent Identification and Development program, which works in joint partnership with the AIS/Olympic Winter Institute of Australia (OWIA) to support the training and development of skeleton athletes for competition and success at the elite level.

A key aim of the AIS/OWIA skeleton program is to identify, develop and fast track talented skeleton athletes to represent Australia at Winter Olympic Games. Based on the performances at this month’s camp, it looks like Australia’s squad will be performing better than ever during the World Cup.