Olympic champion Williams happy to keep skeleton on ice for time being

By Gerard Meagher, Sportsbeat

AMY Williams is no stranger to flying into challenges head first, but Great Britain's sole Olympic champion from Vancouver 2010 insists she's still more than happy putting her feet up.

GOLDEN GIRL: Amy Williams is still riding the crest of a wave, four months on since becoming Great Britain's first female individual Winter Olympic champion for 58 years (Getty Images)

Williams launched herself into the record books four months ago at the Whistler Sliding Centre, becoming Great Britain's first female individual Winter Olympic gold medallist for 58 years and claimed her country's ninth in history.

Easy on the eye and plastered across front and back pages alike in February, Williams has been in demand ever since - it's fair to say the girl nicknamed Curly Wurly saw her world go topsy-turvy.

Appearances on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and the BAFTA Awards are just a couple of examples of how Williams' social calendar has grown - and while the British summer is supposedly now well under way, the skeleton slider is still a busy girl.

Post-Olympic blues are not alien to Britain's golden girls - both Victoria Pendleton and Rebecca Adlington can testify to that.

But whereas Pendleton found solace in her cycling, almost pedalling herself into the ground in 2009, and Adlington was dazzled by the limelight, Williams makes no bones about the fact that in her eyes, for the time being at least, skeleton can wait.

"Vancouver seems like so long ago if I'm honest, it's only when I watch the video back that it all comes flooding back to me," says Williams, who received an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

"There have been ups and downs since I came back and I have found it really hard to get back into training - just because I've been so busy.

"I wouldn't say dealing with the attention comes naturally to me, I'm quite a shy person by nature but then you realise people just want to congratulate and appreciate what you've done.

"I'm trying to do one session a day at the moment and I'm slowly getting back into it, but it's not easy when there are so many other commitments.

"But for me the most important thing is to relax. I want to chill out this coming season and really enjoy myself on the tracks.

"I worked so hard for four years to achieve what I did in Vancouver and at the moment I'm not ready to start that again."

Williams is living proof that investment in winter sport breeds success and she may not like to admit it, due to having something of a frosty relationship with her teammate, but she was a prime benefactor of Shelley Rudman's Olympic silver at Turin 2006.

As a result of Rudman's medal, skeleton's funding was boosted to just a few pennies shy of £2m and therefore took a significant chunk of the £6.5m afforded to winter sports by UK Sport.