Watford-born British bobsleigh chief pushing on in quest for more Olympic glory

While this afternoon's heroes’ parade in the North West and the gathering in Trafalgar Square tomorrow will give the public the opportunity to salute those athletes who collectively won a total of 214 medals in Rio de Janeiro, sport is continually evolving and progressing and the responsibility of others “to take over the baton and run with it” has long since been under way.

The next destination on Team GB’s Olympic journey is Pyeongchang in South Korea in February 2018 when British Bobsleigh will aim to succeed where they so narrowly came up short at the last Winter Games in Sochi and win a medal, although there may be a twist in that particular tale sooner rather than later.

John Jackson’s four-man crew missed out on a place on the podium by just 0.11 seconds, finishing fifth behind two sleds from Russia.

The huge elephant in the room – the allegations of that nation’s state-sponsored doping – was impossible to ignore when I met up again with Gary Anderson, the Watford-born performance director of British Bobsleigh, earlier this month.

His views on the scandal that has cast a dark shadow over sport this year will be discussed in more depth next week. But if the ongoing investigations lead to the Russian gold-medal winning and fourth-place crews having their results at the 2014 Olympics expunged, Britain should be awarded a medal.

That could happen as soon as the end of this month, but it is a process that is out of Anderson’s control. What is very much in his control though, is his area of high performance sport that has seen British Bobsleigh continue on an upward trajectory since Sochi, coming fourth in the two-man event at last year’s World Championship. And it could have been even better had the four-man crew not crashed when they were in silver medal position.

The margins are small, just like they are in a velodrome or in many track and field events, but the constant is high performance. It is, as Anderson explains, “like a family”.

“High performance sport in the UK is a close-knit community – all the performance directors and head coaches meet over the course of a year and we all go through the same processes with UK Sport and the British Olympic Association (BOA) when discussing funding and preparation for major events. We also share practices at major conferences and reviews,” explained the former Leggatts School pupil.

“I am particularly close with other performance directors in team or crew sports as well all experience the same issues, it’s like a family and everyone is very supportive.

“I was delighted for all my summer sport colleagues in Rio. I will be honest, when the medal target was announced a year out from the games I grimaced and thought ‘that’s tough’. But all credit to the UK Sport and the BOA, they stuck to their strategy and exceeded the target. It was brilliant. I have some very good friends who put their reputations on the line, I am so pleased for them.”

Anderson continued: “It is the responsibility of us in the winter sports fraternity to now take over the baton and run with it, and there’s absolutely no reason why we cannot have another record-breaking games in Pyeongchang.”

Golden memories from Rio

Asked what he learnt from Team GB’s achievement of winning 67 Olympic medals – making history as the first nation to exceed their tally from the previous Games as host nation – Anderson responded: “It confirmed what we are doing is correct and the models that we have. The models of funding in the UK, they’re fit for purpose, it allows us to win. We’re the envy of the world.

“It wasn’t long ago that Australia were held up as the world leaders in the way to approach performance sport. We looked at that and now we’ve turned it around and we are the world leaders and given the size of our country and the amount of money we have, the return for that investment is huge.”

Terms such as models, systems and strategies will crop up regularly in any conversation regarding high-performance sport, but the approach Anderson uses is very simple – essentially it’s ensuring every member of his team knows their job, has the authority to make decisions but is able to accept the consequences of those actions.

“If everyone works to that ethos it forms a ‘teamship’ bond that promotes high performance and develops trust, essential for a team to operate,” he continued. “That trust then pays back during times of pressure which are inevitable in high-performance sport.

“I call it the ‘Italian coffee effect’ – as all coffee drinkers know you need the best beans, the highest quality water, the accurate pressure from your coffee machine and to serve it at the right temperature. Even if you do that it somehow never quite tastes the same as it does in Milan.

“We use the same analogy. The sum of all the parts of my team must equate to more than the individual values added together. We don’t always get it right but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

“Our sport can be very complex. We monitor and measure huge amounts of sled data and analyse heaps of video footage to get even the slightest advantage. We work in 0.01- second margins. But we never forget our most precious commodity are the athletes, their ability to accelerate the sled at the start is Great Britain’s chances of a gold medal in 2018.”

And key to those prospects is Britain’s joint third fastest man over 100m ever.

Joel Fearon raised more than a few eyebrows in athletics when he clocked 9.96 seconds at the English Championships in July, but not Anderson. He is not only happy for the sprinter to compete on two sporting fronts, he’s actively encouraging it.

Anderson said: “In Joel’s position on the sled where he is the brakeman at the back of the four man and the back of the two man, the training that he does for that is identical to what he would do for the 100m.

“His aim is to medal at the World Championships in London for athletics and then to medal at the Winter Olympic Games and if he’s running 9.96 in the relay for Great Britain there’s the chance of a medal and certainly in the two-man and four-man we hope to be medal zone come 2018. That target is possible for him and we will encourage that and help him.”

Anderson’s aim is for his crews to be consistently in the top five this season – if they’re within that “we’re comfortable”, outside of it and “we ask questions” – but he is confident their rise up the global bobsleigh pecking order can continue.

“We’ve recruited some excellent athletes into the programme and that is ongoing and continuing and we will never stop doing it,” he said. “We’re in a really good place and I genuinely believe this coming year is where we will really put the marker in the sand for Great Britain.

“If you remember when I talked about Sochi before, I thought it was a year too soon for us. We’ve had that year now, we had a fantastic World Championships last year. It could have been better but it was fantastic…we’re there now. We know who our best athletes are, we know our best equipment and this is the year we push on one year out from the Games."