Two years ago, Brad Hall led his four-man bobsleigh crew to joint-second at the World Championships in St. Moritz, winning Great Britain’s first four-man World Championship medal since 1939.
But ever the competitor, Hall was not satisfied with silver.
The 34-year-old wanted gold and sees the 2025 World Championships as the perfect opportunity to challenge for top honours.
Hall has had a solid season so far, finishing third overall in the World Cup standings in both the two and four-man events, and he explained the importance of being competitive at every race.
“I'm feeling pretty good, and the team is in a good place,” he said. “Good performances definitely matter because we are looking to build up that consistency, we are not looking just to perform once in a year.
“We want to be consistently up with the best in the world.
“To do that on all tracks, it shows that we are very versatile, and we can adapt to different situations. It puts us in a good place.”
The track at Lake Placid is one Hall anticipates being difficult to navigate but the 2023 European champion is relishing the challenge and believes it will create a more level playing field.
“The track out here is quite a tricky one, so hopefully that catches some people off guard, and we can capitalise on that,” he continued.
“When people are making mistakes and if the track is harder to get down, that is when I prefer it.
“Especially when you have got the German teams, their sleds are very dominant at the moment, so we need something to work in our favour.
“If the track is more difficult to drive and I can get on the better side of it, then that is better for us, and we can hopefully overturn some of them.”
The American venue was the scene of Hall’s first World Cup gold medal during the 2022/23 season which gives him confidence about competing there for the first time since that success.
He also opened up about what it felt like to claim silver in St. Mortiz when his aim was to stand atop the podium.
“We have got some very good memories from here [Lake Placid], that was our last race here as well,” he said. “So, hopefully, especially in the four-man event, we can pick up where we left off and try to win another gold.
“At that point in time [finishing joint-second in St. Mortiz], I was a bit disappointed really because we were hoping for gold and we were pushing for that all the way up until the last run.
“I actually made a few mistakes on that run, so it pushed us back and we saw that as a bit of a failure at the time.
“Obviously having had time to reflect and come down from the situation, we were all extremely happy to come away with a silver medal, it was just we wanted to finish on a good run and I think that was the most disappointing part.
“But you cannot complain with a World Championship silver medal.”
With less than a year to go until the Winter Olympics, Hall feels his team are in a good place heading into Milano-Cortina and thinks if they can spend the next year improving on a few things, they can improve on their sixth-place finish in Beijing and challenge for the podium.
“We are still testing a lot with equipment, we are trying to get better as pilots and brakemen and we know there is still more in the tank,” Hall added. “We have been improving steadily throughout this year and success breeds success, so we just want to keep that upwards trend going.
“There is a lot to work on and we are trying our best to put as much of that in place now so that when we get to the Games, we have everything ready and not much thinking to do, so we can just go out and race.”
Hall was forced into having back surgery in 2023 to correct a long-standing problem and was initially unsure if he would be able to return to the sport and compete at the top end of the sport.
However, Hall, who has also seen his teammates battle back from an array of different injuries, thinks his crew can only get better.
“It was very tough,” said Hall. “A lot of bobsledders have had a similar sort of surgery and they were not able to get back to their previous levels.
“I guess that was one of the worries I had.
“[The team] is still not 100% but we are still performing really well, so that gives us a lot of confidence. I think that this time next year, when we have had a good summer under our belts, we are going to be flying.
“We have got an awesome team at the moment; we are all really good friends.
“We all want the best for each other, and we all want to support each other when we win medals for the team, so it is a really good environment.”
Sportsbeat 2025