Friends and rivals – Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt
“It’s actually really easy,” laughed Wyatt on being asked how they navigate the potentially hazardous dynamic of friends and rivals.
“From the moment we joined the British programme, you are taught that we work together,” the 33-year-old explained of the set up at the University of Bath, on England’s west coast, which incredibly does not even have a full skeleton track.
Housing the only sliding-specific training facility in the UK and used by the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association athletes, the set-up focuses solely on the push start, a vital aspect of racing in which skeleton sliders hurtle down the track, navigating corners at up to 90mph (145 km/hour).
It sounds rudimentary, but athletes push a wheeled practice sled along straight embedded metal rails on a concrete slope 140m long (468ft).
A new type of motion-capture technology, however, developed alongside researchers from the university, tracks performance during the push-start phase, all important in gaining those extra milliseconds vital to the time at track’s end.
It works.
Since it opened in 2002, skeleton athletes have won seven medals for Team GB at the Olympic Winter Games including gold-medals from Amy Williams (Vancouver 2010) and Lizzy Yarnold (Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018), while the four-man bobsleigh team won bronze in 2014.
“We only get X amount of runs per year, but if I can talk to Matt after every one of his runs and we share ideas, then suddenly my experience that season doubles,” said 2024 European champion, Wyatt. “We work really closely from the get-go and it’s very easy on race day. It’s not me versus Matt, it’s me versus the clock. You can’t affect anyone else.
“If Matt has a great day… and I have to congratulate him, well done, he’s done a better job than me, but I’m going to try again next week and if I beat him next week, he’ll be the first person to congratulate me.
“You think from the outside it’s quite difficult, but yeah, we make it work.”
Weston concurred: “We also have an open, almost, not agreement, but like philosophy, that each other are the ones we want to beat the most and we’re accepting of that, not in a bad way.
“If I beat Marcus, because he’s a good slider, I know I’m going to have a good day and the same with if he beats me. We’re in a good position where we are probably going to have a good result if we do beat each other,” said Weston, who defended his 2024 world title shortly before the interview, adding a silver in the mixed team event alongside Tabitha Stoecker.
“It’s always pretty healthy, and I enjoy it to be honest.”