Dean Ward didn’t know what to say when, on the eve of his second Olympic Winter Games, he was presented with a graph mapping his mood.
In fact, he was cheesed off that consultant psychologist Peter Terry asked Britain’s bobsledders to fill in a questionnaire every day about how they were feeling.
“We used to fill in these forms, always the same one, ticking these boxes,” he said. “It was just a total ball ache. I never thought psychology in sport was any good.”
One day in Nagano, Terry said to Ward: “I’ve looked at your graph and this part is quite high. That is because you’re angry.”
Ward shot back: “Really? What am I angry about?” Then the five of them sat down and spoke about what was annoying them, what was making them happy and sad.
“As we got closer to race day, that line was getting lower and lower and lower,” Ward remembers. “On the day, that line was flat and it meant I was in a good place – we all were.
“It was our time to get that medal and everything fell into place.”
Sports science has since evolved but the four-man bronze won by Ward and company in 1998 stands as the first in the era of National Lottery funding.
It is a triumph that echoes down history with Ward and Courtney Rumbolt jointly regarded as Team GB’s first black Winter Olympic medallists.
That quartet was exceptional for a number of reasons. Three of them served in the British Army - Sean Olsson and Ward were both Paratroopers and Paul Attwood a Royal Marine.
The comparison to a military campaign is an obvious one but there was little about Ward’s journey, in particular, that was meticulously planned.
Dean was born on a council estate in Loughborough to parents who were both factory workers and worked as a laminator and labourer in the area before joining the Army.
It was a comfortable upbringing - “an everyday family on an everyday estate” - but Ward was marked out by wanderlust and attraction to risk and danger.
“My folks are still in the same house I grew up in,” he said. “Three of us used to hang around on the main street and they’re still there, they’ve got their own families now.
“About all that changes is that you hear that people you knew as a kid have died. That makes it a bit sad.”
Ward pushed against the boundaries of that environment. He joined the Army Cadets aged 13 and aged 16, was determined to enlist as a junior in the Army.
His mother wouldn’t hear of it, however, because of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and Dean needed parental permission to join up before he turned 18.
“I knew nothing about how tough it would be physically, I guess I was just attracted to the Army by the camaraderie and wearing the uniform,” he said.
“The whole aspect of it, it looked like a great career to be in. Being in the Cadets and seeing the older guys, they were my role models growing up.”
Ward got his wish at 18 and joined 480 Platoon at Aldershot in January 1982.
It just so happened that his training would be filmed by BBC cameras and enshrined in a documentary, ‘The Paras.’ The brutality of the process burns through modern eyes.
The second time Ward had ever been on a plane, he jumped out of it and for the duration of the documentary his expression is locked in a mash-up of total shell-shock and a steely smile.
“It was a massive shock to the system,” he said. “I actually think what got me through was determination and not allowing anybody to, you know, defeat me.
“I think that's been me all the way through my life and why I really set my mind to things. I know it's hard, but I'm not going to give up and I'll just keep on going.
“Bobsleigh was the same – I achieved what I achieved, and I’m actually too small for it.”
Ward’s major overseas deployment was in Belize in 1983, living in the jungle for six months and preparing to resist any invasion by Guatemalan forces.
He was stationed in Northern Ireland - so much for Mum’s warning - and took part in major NATO exercises all over the world.
Having served for nearly a decade, Ward began to spread his wings and slowly reignited his interest in the sporting arm of the military.
Always the quickest kid on the block growing up, he started training for the Army Athletics Championships and won the 100m title in a time of 10.5 seconds.
“Some guy spotted me warming up on the track at Aldershot,” remembers Dean. “He asked me, ‘have you ever thought about doing bobsleigh?’ I didn’t know what it was, to be fair.”
Ward accepted an invitation to meet the team that week and found it was coached by Margot and Allan Wells. Allan, of course, won Olympic gold in the 100m at Moscow 1980 and Margot was a Scottish sprint champion.
At that time, the team trained under the Wells aegis on a dry run at the back of the Thorpe Park Resort in Surrey.
His first skirmishes with the sport weren’t smooth. Sure, he was quick, but he lacked the size, power and technique of those competing for places in the sled.
“I was in a situation where I needed to get stronger quickly because I was competing against superior guys,” he said.
“I was right at the bottom of the pack but because I had the determination, drive and enthusiasm to get better, I managed to creep up the ladder.
“People underestimated me - absolutely. The formula was 'big guy, light sled' and I managed to overcome that.”
Ward’s prowess came in the push start. In one trial, an injury absence gave him the chance to slice 0.5 seconds off the start time of the top sled - a margin too great for Wells to ignore.
Starting is his specialist subject - he is still consulted by the BBSA on it and in the lead-up to Nagano, the British crew were consistently the best starters in the word.
Ward invented a loading technique that he calls the ‘Cannonball.’
It was a small but vital change to the way the second man loads behind the pilot, a deep squat that removed the need to thread his legs either side of Olsson and avoid catching him with his spikes.
“Sean could concentrate on just driving rather than thinking about what was going on behind him,” said Ward, “and I invented that. It’s my trademark!
“It was funny - the Germans are the team to beat, always have been, and whenever they saw anything good that other teams were doing, they filmed it. They filmed the Cannonball.”
Ward joined the British World Cup squad in 1991 and being in Olsson’s top-tier squad, liked his chances of making an Olympic debut at Albertville 1992.
Having finished second in the British Championships, he was only named as a reserve.
“I was so, so upset,” he said. “It brought tears to my eyes. I won a glass tankard for finishing second at the Championships and I smashed it in my hands. I was devastated.
“I never wanted anyone to beat me and it was one of the first times in my life that I had to acknowledge that there were four guys who had beaten me.”
The decision to move the Winter Olympics to its own window meant Ward only had to wait two years until Lillehammer 1994 and the chance to make amends.
Another cruel twist of fate nearly intervened when he picked up a bad rib injury in a pre-Olympic race at Altenberg but he pulled himself through rehab to make the Games.
He finished eighth in the four-man alongside Olsson, John Herbert and Paul Field.
“The Olympics were just brilliant,” he said. “It was mind-blowing for a lad from Loughborough - you feel like a celebrity for the week. It makes you feel important.”
Ward raced with Rumbolt, Lenny Paul and Mark Tout in the build-up to Nagano and they won overall World Cup and European silver in 1994-95, one of British bobsleigh’s best-ever seasons.
The squad was rocked to its core in 1996 when pilot Tout failed a drugs test and was banned for four years.
Out of that dark moment for the sport came the foursome of Olsson, Ward, Rumbolt and Attwood that would take it to its highest point in a generation.
They stormed to Team GB’s first bobsleigh medal since Tony Nash and Robin Dixon’s two-man gold in 1964, tying for third place with France after three runs in Japan.
Rumbolt and Ward hold a unique place in British Olympic history but one they were unaware of until October 2021.
“We got invited to do an interview with Sky for Black History Month” says Ward.
“They sat us down and said, ‘do you realise that you were the first black guys to win a Winter Olympic medal.’
“I looked at Courtney and we were like, ‘wow, we didn’t even know that.’ We’re in the history books again.”
It is Ward all over - naturally self-effacing - he went on to work as a truck driver for Tesco.
“Occasionally someone at works says, 'were you really in the Paras? Did you win an Olympic medal?'.
“I'll tell them a few stories and after that it gets put on the back burner. I don't talk about it much these days.”
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