Forget girl power, skeleton's Dom Parsons is ready to show British men can also compete in the nation's adopted winter sport.
Forget girl power, skeleton's Dom Parsons is ready to show British men can also compete in the nation's adopted winter sport.
Great Britain have finished on the skeleton podium at each of the last four Olympic Winter Games, including gold for Lizzy Yarnold four years ago.
And you have to go back as far as 1948 - and John Crammond's bronze - for the last male medallist.
Parsons sat out of the fifth and sixth training runs at the Olympic sliding centre but no-one has posted a quicker time than his in the past two days.
And his 50.78 second third run bettered many much higher-ranked sliders, including home favourite Sungbin Yun, considered Korea’s biggest medal banker at these Games
"I feel more like I’m coming into form at the right time. There's sometimes just a little eureka moment," said Parsons.
“This season of course I had a terrible start but the results have picked up closer to the Games, so I came in with a bit of added confidence.
“I’m really loving this track, I think I’m picking it up really well and starting to gel with it.”
Parsons is also reaping the benefits of working with former world champion and three-time Olympian Kristan Bromley, who finished fifth in Vancouver eight years ago.
“Kristan’s been helping me out with developing my sled and just advice, he’s achieved so much in the sport, everything really,” he added.
“I’ve taken big steps forward in my driving skills – partly thanks to that and partly through development as well.”
Search Jerry Rice on the internet and you will have to scroll an awful long way before coming to Team GB’s other men’s skeleton slider in PyeongChang.
It's the price you have to pay for sharing your name with an American football great but, while it makes for good banter when competing in America.
And Rice is determined to make himself more recognisable thanks to his performances this week
“I constantly get referred to as the greatest NFL wide receiver of all time,” he said.
“It causes shock at American tracks when people see or hear Jerry Rice on the start list, and it’s not the Jerry Rice they’re used to.
“But I’d like to get to the point where when you type Jerry Rice into Google my face comes up as well as his.”
Olympic debutant Rice is a relative late comer to skeleton. A former semi-professional rugby league and union player, he switched to the sport after developing a love of winter sports while working at the world-famous Cresta Run in St Moritz.
“I was working the clubhouse helping with admin tasks,” he explained.
“I got to slide on it and at the end of the season someone said to me: ‘You might be quote good at skeleton’. So I got in contact with British Skeleton and went through all their testing criteria.
“I used to ski a little bit, I was a rugby player before, league mainly. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do so I took a leap of faith and now I'm here at an Olympics.”
Sportsbeat 2018