Winter Olympics 2018: Parsons moves within striking distance of skeleton medal

Great Britain’s Dominic Parsons is within striking distance of a medal in the Olympic men’s skeleton, writes James Toney in PyeongChang.

The 30-year old slider produced some attention-grabbing times in training and continued where he left off in competition.

After two of four runs he sits in fourth place, just three hundredths of a second off a podium position.

Korea’s Sungbin Yun, the World Cup champion racing under the weight of home expectation, enjoys a commanding seven tenths of a second lead over the field but it’s tight for the other medal places.

Neutral Russian athlete Nikita Tregubov lies second ahead of Latvia’s Martin Dukurs, the silver medallist in Sochi.

And Parsons played down the simmering row over the hi-tech super suits British sliders are wearing in South Korea.

“The British have a good programme for innovation but a lot of other countries are also working on innovation too, the Germans are never sitting still,” he said.

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“I don’t think it’s an arms race. It’s more that little extra edge because without getting the basics right you’re not going to go fast.

“The main focus of all the work we do is working with our coaches, working on the fundamentals of sliding and being able to get speed out of a sled, understanding the tracks and getting our lines down the tracks. That is the biggest thing and that is where most of our work has gone.”

Despite being in the medal mix, Parsons claimed there was plenty of room for improvement and insisted he’d still sleep soundly ahead of the biggest day of his career on Friday.

“I overdrove a couple of bits on the first run and went a bit offline but the second run was much tidier,” he added.

Focus

“I’m still a bit disappointed because my start was not quite where I wanted it to be. I closed in on my rivals after that second run and hopefully I can keep reeling them in.

“It’s what I’ve been working on for the last four years. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves too much. I’ll just focus on the next two runs first.

“I think blocking it out is a bit counter-productive. I’ll be just make sure I’ve done all the work I need to do before I try to switch off and use something to distract me, a TV show, reading a book or whatever.”

• Watch Dom in action next on Eurosport 1 at 12.30am tonight. Don’t miss a moment of the Olympic Winter Games on Eurosport and Eurosport Player. Go to www.eurosport.co.uk