Skeleton racer Sarah Reid punched her ticket to Sochi in late November, in front of a hometown crowd at the Calgary World Cup. This will be her first official trip to the Olympics, despite having been in Vancouver as a track tester. Sportsnet caught up with her mid-season to ask about her start in the sport, what it was like to qualify for the Olympics, and the unique nature of the track at Sochi.
SN: The first time down a track you must’ve been terrified, right?
SR: I actually wasn’t. I think I just didn’t know what to expect. I immediately loved the speed and kind of the thrill of it. I think I was young enough that I didn’t really… you know when you’re young and you just don’t really care, don’t realize the risk? I just loved it right away.
SN: When you first got into the sport what were your expectations for yourself?
SR: To be honest, for the first few years it didn’t even really occur to me that I could go to the Olympics and be an Olympian. I just kind of loved what I was doing and thought that it was really fun and really cool. I made the America’s Cup team, which is kind of the first level of competition that you can go to when you’re a development athlete, and I didn’t do great. I think I struggled to get a second run for most races, but I had one race in Lake Placid that my second race run was a fifth-place run. I remember thinking to myself, “Gosh, maybe I’m not that bad at this. Maybe I can actually work at it and do well.” That kind of sparked my drive to get better and better, and obviously after watching Canada dominate in the 2006 Olympics and watching Jon [Montgomery] win in 2010 it just made me really hungry for what I could do in the sport.
SN: Were you in Vancouver for 2010?
SR: I was. I was one of the athletes that got to fore-run the race. It was actually an amazing experience because I think it gave me a little bit of an inside look at the Games, being able to be in the start house with all the athletes when they’re kind of prepping for their Olympic runs without having to feel the pressure of it myself.
SN: What’s your pre-run routine like? Do you have any superstitions or things that you have to do before you hop on the sled?
SR: I don’t have too many superstitions, no. One thing that our strength and conditioning coach, Kelly Forbes, said to me a few years ago is that everyone should have a focus funnel. Basically it should get smaller and smaller the closer you get to the race. That really made sense to me because if I’m so focused on my race three hours before the race by the time my race rolls around, I’m exhausted. I really try to keep the focus funnel quite wide and pay attention to how it narrows when I get closer to my run.
SN: What can you tell me about the Sochi track itself?
SR: What I’ve found to be kind of different from other tracks is the track in Sochi has three uphill portions. That’s not very common for a skeleton track. It’s different because you come out of a corner and that’s usually when the pressure’s off your body and the pressure’s off your head and you can kind of look up to the next corner. But in the uphill portions you have pressures in the straightaways, so that’s a really different feeling you kind of have to get used to.