Great Britain’s short track speed skaters are gearing up to take on the best in the world this weekend.
And according to Charlotte Gilmartin and Elise Christie, they can face the challenge with confidence thanks to some friendly intra-squad rivalry.
The World Championships kick off in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday with Gilmartin and Christie providing the female British representation.
Gilmartin won her maiden World Cup medal in December – a bronze in Shanghai – and followed that up with 3,000m gold and overall silver at the European Championships.
The 26-year-old appears to be going from strength-to-strength and is starting to challenge Christie on a regular basis.
And she insists that she now has more self-belief than ever heading into the sport’s showpiece event this weekend, largely thanks to her competitive instincts being heightened by training with her team-mate. “Some days you wake up and it hurts to walk down the stairs – your legs are in bits and you’re thinking ‘how can I even train today’,” Gilmartin told the BBC.
“Then you see Elise doing extra training and you think ‘I’ve got to do this’ and it makes you refocus.
“This year was my first World Cup medal, so of course that is going to fill me with confidence
“Straight off the back of that we went to Europeans and it was my first overall medal in second. I’m definitely on a high right now.”
While Gilmartin is beginning to make serious waves at the top of the sport, Christie has already been doing so for a number of years.
The 25-year-old is a ten-time European champion and regular winner on the World Cup circuit over 500m and 100m.
Yet World Championship gold has thus far eluded her, although three silver medals over the past two years is not bad consolation.
And similarly to her team-mate, Christie claims she is able face the world’s best head on due to the threat of being overtaken by Gilmartin being so real.
“Quite often Charlotte will get to the same level as me and I think ‘oh god, how can I get better than this now?’” explained Christe.
“I get scared at every British Championships that she’s going to take the title from me because we are very close.”
Sportsbeat 2016