Hurtling down ice headfirst is not the hard part of skeleton star Matt Weston’s job.
The recently crowned overall World Cup champion admits it's what goes on behind the helmet which is making all the difference, with an improved mindset credited as key to his success.
Weston is now preparing to get his World Championship crown back with the event beginning in Lake Placid on Thursday.
“Mindset has always been a thing I like to work on,” the 28-year-old said. “It is a trend from when I was a younger athlete, that when my headspace and my mindset were really good, I performed really well and when it wasn’t it was a direct correlation for me.
“So I have put a lot of focus on working on that and the better I have become with that the more consistent my results have become.
“The actual sliding side of the sport I really enjoy and find that side easier than the mindset and psychologist side of things so that is the thing I focus my attention on.
“One of the key things in the sport is how relaxed and how focused you can be so if I’m going down and I’m nervous I might be more tense which would interact with the sled differently which makes it slower.
“It is weird that you have to be as relaxed as possible going 90 miles an hour headfirst down an ice track. It is quite contradictory!”
The Redhill native won his first world title in 2023, becoming the first British man to stand on the top step of the podium since Kristan Bromley.
In 2024, Weston was forced to settle for silver behind Germany’s Christopher Grotheer as he missed out on defending his crown by just two-tenths of a second.
Part of his recent work on mindset has been around how he can better deal with the pressure of being the one everyone is chasing.
And it worked to good effect as he retained his overall World Cup title, beating out British teammate Marcus Wyatt, who claimed silver in a historic 1-2.
Another element of Weston’s emphasis on psychology has been around being able to feel comfortable opening up with those closest to him in the sport.
He added: “Psychologists can’t travel with you all of the time, so if I am able to be open and honest with my coaches no matter how difficult that might be sometimes is one of the things that separates me and GB as a whole from everyone else.
“With me and Marcus Wyatt being one and two in the world it is our work on being mentally strong that is contributing to that.
“Because I work with my coaches daily it can be tougher to break that mould and open up but over the last year or so I have found it to be really beneficial.
“I’ve been able to be more open and honest with myself and those guys as well and they are able to help me more as well.
“It is not necessarily a hard thing, I wasn’t worried about their reaction, it was more a personal inside thing being able to open up because it is always difficult to talk about the things that aren’t so easy.”
The men’s event kicks off the Skeleton World Championships in Lake Placid with the women’s and mixed team events to come.
Weston claimed silver in both the men's and mixed team disciplines last time out, but it was losing his world title that has fuelled the fire of any already successful season, no matter the result this week.
“Last year, I was two-tenths off winning it again and a tenth of a second is literally the blink of an eye so two blinks is what I lost the World Championships by,” he said.
“I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about that. I was a bit annoyed I wasn’t able to maintain that and so I am really going after it this year.
“That is the goal and I never approach a race not wanting to win. I’ve got a bit of confidence off the back of winning the overall again with the consistency I have had.
“And that is going to be key going into this track as it is a really technical, really difficult track so if you can be consistent that’s massive.
“But the main goal is to win and take it back off the Germans.”