From velodrome to bobsleigh track inside a year: Vicky Williamson on chasing a different Olympic dream

It was earlier this month, breathing in the fresh air of Germany’s Saxon Ore Mountains and moments away from reaching speeds of almost 120km per hour on ice, that reality hit home for Vicky Williamson. “I just thought, ‘I’m doing a race here. I’m doing bobsleigh now.’

She was not the only one adjusting. Until an announcement 24 hours previously, most people would have known Williamson as a track cyclist. Or more specifically the cyclist left millimetres away from paralysis after a horrific crash in 2016, who remarkably returned to international competition this January still harboring hopes for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. But here she was, 11 months on, about to barrel down an icy chute with just a handful of practice runs under her belt, hoping it would be the start of a new dream for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.

"I think if I got on a velodrome now it would feel flat!" she remarks to Telegraph Sport, freshly returned from Germany, where she finished fifth on that Europe Cup debut in Altenberg alongside Mica McNeill.

"I’m glad I’ve still found a sport to use my athletic capabilities and I’ve not had to finish my elite sport career just yet. I’ve got another opportunity in what is my crazy life. It’s refreshing to go into a new environment and start again."

There are many questions surrounding the 26-year-old's switch. Why opt for a sport arguably more brutal and unforgiving than the one she left behind? One that left her with injuries so severe - a broken back, neck and pelvis among them following her crash at Rotterdam Six-Day - that specialists feared she would have to fight to lead a normal life. Why choose to transition to a sport that receives absolutely zero in UK Sport funding, compared to the medal-winning two-wheeled behemoth that benefits from one of the healthiest portions of all?

Firstly, though, Williamson, the 2013 team sprint world bronze medallist, addresses how the wheels on her cycling career stopped  spinning.

“I competed at the World Championships and the World Cup this year but I was just really struggling to find that extra edge because the world’s best have moved on since I crashed,” says Williamson, 14th in the team sprint at February's World Championships.

"It’s like that mental battle of constantly not feeling like you’re good enough and always trying to find that edge. Mentally and physically I had exhausted cycling in both aspects. My body was literally at breaking point but my head was as well.  I’ve always said to myself it’s all about enjoying the process. Obviously we all want to win and be the best but there is no point in being there if you’re not enjoying it."

The target to prove she was on track for Tokyo was September's Poland Grand Prix but the build up was disastrous, the desire to find that extra edge leaving her requiring constant treatment on her creaking back, including injections after being left unable to walk due to tendonitis in her lower spine. If Williamson already sensed her race was nearly run, then results in Poland confirmed it.

"At that point, we were under a year to go and physically I was not going to get to where I needed to be competitive at Tokyo,"  she says about the mutual decision for her to step away from British Cycling's funded programme.

“It was a tough pill to swallow but I can’t look back in regret because there is literally nothing else I could have done, I gave 150 per cent. Everyone around me was saying the same thing. I’ve already surpassed what a lot of people would have thought I would have achieved and I have to constantly remind myself of that on a daily basis so that I don’t lose my head and feel really down."

Williamson is not one to wallow for long and so when one door was closing, she was already marching through another - with the help of social media.

"I remember coming back from Poland and seeing on my feed that Mica (McNeill) was having bobsleigh trial sessions for people who had applied to her post in July, which I had also seen, about looking for strong, powerful females for brakewomen," explains Williamson. "I thought 'I am strong, powerful. Admittedly I am not heavy enough, I need to put on muscle.' But I thought it’s definitely doable."

Except that was the Friday. And the trials, as she found out after tentatively contacting McNeil with her gym numbers, were eight days later, with just one session left in Bath on Tuesday to learn the basic techniques of pushing a sled down the concrete push-start track. Williamson, a former hurdler, threw caution to the wind and dashed down to Bath from Manchester.

If her mind was racing, then her legs, unaccustomed to running after nine years competing on a bike, were screaming the rest of the week but she returned for the trials and ended up pushing the second fastest time.

"I got an email saying the place is there if you want it. Everything happens for a reason so 'hell yeah,' I thought, 'I’m in!''"

Pushing a single sled down a dry starting track is one thing. Hurtling down ice in a two-man bobsleigh is another altogether, as Williamson discovered when she travelled to Germany in mid-November. She had passed all the medical checks but she still harboured understandable concerns about whether her body would stand up to the extreme g-forces, sitting at the back of the sled. “In my head I was preparing for the most vicious ride ever but it really wasn’t. And my back and stuff was fine.”

Practice also makes perfect and after nearly being too exhausted to apply the brakes on her second run after mistakenly holding her breath going down, Williamson began to adapt. "In my head after the first two runs, I was debating whether the sport was for me," she says. "But it’s a lot to do with not sitting in the right position, I was upright and tense. Now I’ve learnt how to sit in the back, I absolutely love it. The thrill is just so good."

After constantly fighting against the tide in cycling for the last three years, Williamson is relishing the new start and talks excitedly of her potential to grow, especially coming from a standing start with no specific bobsleigh training.

Physical horizons have been broadened too. After years "cooped up in a velodrome" she is loving the fresh air. Long gone are the days of vitamin D supplements, instead her skin just needs to "toughen up a little bit" to the cold.

The lower temperatures mean it takes longer for her back to warm up but from a mechanical point of view, the action of pushing a sled compared to pushing force out on a bike is better.

"Sometimes the less I do, the worse my back gets because I actually need load through it. Once I’ve made the transition fully and I’ve got the right physio in place and rehab, when I’ve really got the wheels in motion, I do think it will be better than cycling."

It is a reminder that despite the thrill of the last few months spent pretty much on fast-forward, Williamson is still essentially at the start of an unknown, albeit exciting, journey. For one thing, she has not yet experienced a crash, an occurrence almost unavoidable in such a dangerous sport.

After Christmas she will make the step up to World Cup level, competing with former Olympic sprinter Montell Douglas for the role of brakewoman alongside McNeill, the aim being February’s World Championships.

Already the stakes are high. The reason behind McNeill searching for a brakewoman off her own back was that British Bobsleigh lost public funding after failing to win a medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

McNeill even required crowdfunding to get to PyeongChang but she has obvious talent as a driver, evidenced in the fact she and former teammate Mica Moore still managed to achieve Britain’s best finish with eighth. The next step is to find the right teammate to help deliver the push-start power for her.

As for the "obviously not ideal" but "eye-opening" funding situation, Williamson is relying on the remainder of her athlete performance award from her cycling days, which finishes in February, as well as being kept afloat by Under Armour sponsorship. If results do not go their way at the World Championships then Williamson concedes she may have to seek part-time work.

"I never took it for granted with cycling," she says. "But even more so now, once you step out of the sports that do have high levels of funding, you realise just how much you get when you are involved in that. My advice to younger athletes out there would be make sure you absorb everything and get the best from the environment you are in because it is special when you are in any of the sports which have funding."

Given all the circumstances, optimism is undeniably invaluable. Fortunately for Williamson, tackling the fight head on is the only approach she knows. "In my eyes, the comeback is not complete until I reach the Olympics. But I don’t want to be just an Olympian, I want to be a medal-winning Olympian."