Sharing is caring when it comes to Team GB's skeleton success, according to Laura Deas.
Deas medalled on her Olympic debut in 2018, sharing the podium with teammate Lizzy Yarnold, who in PyeongChang became the first Team GB athlete to defend a winter Olympic title.
Deas will take up the mantle of squad veteran in Beijing, leading a new crop of sliders eager to keep Team GB’s five-Games medal streak - including three successive women’s golds - alive.
The Welsh star feels that a willingness to share knowledge between the generations has been and will continue to be key to keeping that run going.
“I think that’s something that is quite an integral part of our success as a squad,” she said.
“I think we, possibly unlike some other nations, obviously it’s an individual sport, when it’s you, on the sled, on the ice. But actually, we operate as a team.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why Lizzy and I were able to be successful together. We didn’t keep things from each other, we shared our information on the basis that it might help someone else, and also they might have a thought that might really help you.
“It’s something we continue to work on as a squad. We have a really strong group mentality as to how we go about things.
“Obviously everybody has their own interpretation of how they slide, what their strengths and weaknesses are in the sport.
“But I think we realised that with the six members of the squad, if you all work together you can generate six times as much information which might be useful to us.”
Team GB have reached the podium in every Olympics, and won nine medals, since skeleton was reintroduced at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
Alex Coomber, racing with a broken wrist, won bronze for Britain, kicking off an astonishing run for British women.
Shelley Rudman slid to Turin silver before Amy Williams took the top step at Vancouver 2010. Yarnold’s double golds cemented Britain as a skeleton powerhouse—a reputation, Deas can sense, the next generation is very eager to uphold.
“It’s incredible to see that more than ten years on it’s still going strong, and we’re building on the success that was already in place when I started,” Deas said, adding: “if we all qualify, it will be everyone else’s first Games experience.
“I love drawing on that. The hunger and the motivation that they have to reach their first Olympic Games, because it’s something that I remember very vividly as being very particular.
“It’s such a strong driver to want to join that club, to become an Olympian, so actually I’m drawing a huge amount of motivation and energy from what they’re bringing to the team as well.”
Perhaps she’ll remember more of these Games. The bronze medal-winning moment, said Deas, is something she’ll “never forget” but the rest of it, well…
“There’s a lot of the Olympics which is actually a blur,” she admitted. “Or, I don’t have many memories of, I think just because of the pressure and the focus that you’re under at that time.
“But from the moment the last athlete crossed the line and we knew where we’d finished, I’ve got incredibly clear memories of just staring up into the crowd in that stand, which was full of friends, family, Brits, and the place just went absolutely wild.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that. I still get goosebumps if I think about it.”
There is only one woman in the world in possession of 2018 Olympic skeleton bronze.
But even standing on that PyeongChang podium, said Deas, invoked the superpower of the secret-swapping sliding sisterhood, their bond singular to Team GB, that’s fuelled the squad’s near two decades of dominance.
She added: “The fact that I was with Lizzy, we’d started our skeleton careers on the same day.
“And there we were together, for so many years on, doing that.
“It was incredibly special. Something that I’m very aware that not many people will ever experience.
“I’m extremely grateful for that.”
Sportsbeat 2021