Yarnold rocked by finding she suffers from balance issues
It has not been an easy year for Lizzy Yarnold. An extremely challenging one, in fact.
Take as an example her description of a problem that has been bugging her on skeleton runs for the past few years and was diagnosed in the summer as a vestibular disorder in her inner ear.
‘It is very awkward and very uncomfortable but it doesn’t happen often,’ she says. ‘I might be travelling down a fast track like Whistler in Canada that I have gone down six times in a week and tens of times in my career.
It has not been an easy year but a challenging one for Team GB's skeleton slider Lizzy Yarnold
‘So I know what is coming, and what it is all about, how it goes, but when I am going down and getting maybe a bit faster and feeling more g-force, my vestibular issue clicks in, and I am disorientated. What happens is I know I am in a corner and I know that I am travelling around but I can’t necessarily pick up exactly what is going on or I cannot pinpoint the finer details.
‘It is just a disorientation of the brain and spatial awareness.’
The necessary context here is that the Olympic skeleton champion tends to reach speeds of about 90mph on the thinnest of sleds on a rapid ice chute.
In a sport measured by the tiniest of margins and played out at the most absurd pace, the issue sounds mildly troubling at best. But with Yarnold landing in Pyeongchang on a mission to make history as Britain’s first back-to-back Winter Olympic champion, her conviction is that it will not make the slightest difference.
‘It is something I know how to deal with because the professor has told me what it is and how it will present itself and how to recover. It is not so much an issue now. I was diagnosed in March 2017. I had been suffering with it for a couple of years but we eventually found out. I am in a really good place. It doesn’t affect me at this track in Pyeongchang.’
Time will tell if that is bravado, or a case of self-persuasion. It is equally unknown whether the issue has had a major impact on her form this season, which has been a shadow of her preparations for Sochi, when she dominated the World Cup season.
When she got to Russia she set track records on two of her four runs and won by a huge margin of 0.97 seconds.
This time, by contrast, it has been a slog. She had just one podium in the eight races of the World Cup season — at the opener in Lake Placid, USA, — before a recovery of sorts in the final event in Konigssee, Germany, in January, where she was fourth.
It is perhaps indicative of the malaise that when UK Sport announced their Pyeongchang medal projections last month, skeleton, their best-funded sport, was told their target was only top eight.
That would represent something of a soft goal for a reigning champion who believes her experience of top level competition will put her in the mix for gold.
‘I have never lost faith in myself,’ she says. ‘I know I can do it.
She was diagnosed in the summer with a vestibular disorder in her inner ear
‘The competition is very tough, but I like going to a track and having a clean slate. This track does suit me and I know I can handle the expectation at home because no one pressures me more than I pressure myself. I will go through my routines and processes, step up to the start and do what I have done a lot of times before.’
The routine is an interesting one. It is a fascinating subplot of this speed-obsessed athlete that she is so sedate in person. Her hobby is cooking and she spent a sabbatical year after Sochi making lampshades.
But there is a distinct moment of transformation before all her races.
‘I have a ritual where I turn my head to the right to clip on my helmet and ask myself, “Do you really want to do it, if I leave will anyone notice?” I do that, then I look straight ahead and I completely commit and tell myself go for it. Your heart goes faster and your body actually feels ready for a fight almost. You feel so alert but you have to control your nerves. After that it is me and the track.’
It is something of an underdog status that Yarnold will take to South Korea, in addition to a new sled — the Green Machine, which has replaced the less dramatically named Mervyn. ‘It is nice and bright,’ she says. ‘I want to make a statement, be an individual — different sled, different name.’
With any luck she can overcome the challenges and get the same result.