Flight lieutenant Nicole Burger’s journey to the Winter Olympics in Italy next week has unfolded at a break-neck pace, pretty much like the event she’s doing. The skeleton slider started the sport competitively just more than two years ago, but she has since clocked a top speed of 133kph and hurtles around corners notching up G-forces of four to five, not too far off what F1 drivers experience. The 31-year-old, who flies out of her Oxfordshire, England, base today for the Milano Cortina showpiece that kicks off with the opening ceremony on Friday, secured her spot only late in the qualification process.
“It was so unexpected that I reached this point so quickly,” said Burger, who was born in Bellville, Cape Town, and emigrated with her parents when she was around five, although she visits frequently. “My nan’s over there and we have aunts, cousins, everyone else is still over there so we go back a lot. I definitely miss the weather.” Possessing an adventurous spirit, Burger has done horse-riding safaris at the base of Mount Kenya after university, racked up 40 hours of flying a single prop plane and, of course, loves rollercoasters.
She also enjoyed sport, competing in athletics as a heptathlete and playing wing or outside centre for the Royal Air Force (RAF) rugby teams. When the RAF training officer spotted an in-house advert offering some 90 sports to members, she thought her sprinting skills would be a good match for skeleton. In December 2023, having done just five weeks of sliding, Burger entered her first international race.
Read Full Article on TimesLIVE
[paywall]
The learning curve was steep, getting a crash course, so to speak, on the art of tightening the right bolts on the sled in the right way. “I was tightening bolts left, right and centre and then my sled just wasn’t running. I was going sideways down the whole track.” Burger, who quit horse riding because it was too expensive and gave up her bid to get a pilot’s licence because of the cost, soon discovered that skeleton was no cheap exercise.
[/paywall]
