Q&A with....Kristan Bromley

KRISTAN Bromley may not be a household name but the skeleton ace is one of Great Britain's best medal hopes at the Vancouver Winter Olympics and is the brains behind partner Shelley Rudman's silver medal at Turin 2006.

OLYMPIC HOPEFUL: Kristian Bromley has been the brains behind two British Olympic medals - now he wants his own in Vancouver

The 2008 world, European and World Cup series champion is dubbed Doctor Ice having obtained a PhD from the University of Nottingham with a thesis entitled ‘Factors affecting the performance of skeleton bobsleds'. 

Here he is sharing all with Sportsbeat's George Scott.

Q: Skeleton is not exactly what you would call a mainstream sport. How do you find out you've got the talent for sliding on ice?

A: I was a young engineer at British Aerospace a long time ago and was working on Eurofighter - on the carbon fibre side of manufacturing - and I got involved in a company programme to help design faster sleds for the national team.

To cut a long story short I became a test pilot and took my motorcross background into the sport and over three years I simply just existed on the sled to go from A to B to collect data.

It turned out I had a knack for it and three years later I won a place on the team and became the lead athlete.

It was a small team at the time - and I was the lead athlete from that moment forward. It's a great harmony between technology and athlete.

It's all about challenging your own boundaries, being part of the big events and meeting some great people all different countries.

Q: You race on sleds that you design yourself along with your brother Richard for your Sheffield-based company Bromley Technologies Ltd. What have you been cooking up for the coming season?

A: We've got a programme called Formula Ice based in Sheffield and it's based on about ten companies - all blue chip companies - supporting us and it's been a real good example of industry getting behind sport.

It's about being added value for the programme we've got and making up for the geographical disadvantage we have.

We get great support as a team from the lottery which we can't exist without. That's absolutely essential for us and exists to allow us to have a programme and get to the tracks.

 The icing on cake is really what makes the difference and has done throughout my career and Formula Ice just gives us that icing.

We've got lots up our sleeve for Vancouver. It's like a little mini F1 team really - obviously we don't have the budgets but we operate in that kind of way. We can only go forward through the good will of our sponsors in the industry and we're really proud that Great Britain is getting behind us. 

MISSING MEDAL: Great Britain's Kristian Bromley is only missing an Olympic medal from his impressive collection (Getty Images)

Q: And how easy is it to juggle your behind-the-scenes role with competing?

A: This year we have the first situation ever in British skeleton where some of the athletes were pre-selected for the first half of the season.

That's fantastic news for me because I've always had to play around with the technology and play around with my programme and take risks in selection races and World Cup events - that's really difficult because sometimes you don't get it right. 

When you're trying to gain an advantage and innovation is part of your programme it's really tricky to have a strategy to keep your funding and to hit your goals to stay in the programme as well as put a programme together which is going to do it in two years time. 

For me to be able to do it pre-season is going to be one of the key areas of the season.

Q: With the Winter Olympics heading to Vancouver next February, this season obviously has carries added significance, do your career ambitions extend beyond this season?

A:  I've been working really hard over the summer. Two years ago I had an amazing season and made a bit of history but last year was a bit quiet and that was deliberately so.

I wanted to take a step back, watch what was going on and as soon as we hit March it was full throttle. Since then it's been head down, training hard, developing new sleds and putting a package together which we're going to be proud of come February.

The lowest moment of my career has to be just missing out on a medal in Turin. It was there dangling in front of me but was just taken away.

So my short-term goal and sporting dream is to win an Olympic medal and that's the one thing on my mind this year. My professional dream is to develop the Bromley brand into a global action sports brand.