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By Owen Morgan
On the day rugby superstar Louis Rees-Zammit jetted off to Florida in pursuit of his American football dream, two Welsh track and field athletes continued to take the world of bobsleigh by storm.
Reigning British shot put champion Adele Nicoll and Welsh international sprinter Kya Placide teamed-up to win British Bobsleigh’s first Europa Cup gold medal for seven seasons with success in St Moritz on Friday morning.
They took top spot for the first time in their bobsleigh careers less than 24 hours after Nicoll secured silver in the monobob event at the same venue.
While Rees Zammit will be chasing a potential multi-million NFL contract in a sport he has never played professionally, Nicoll and Placide each have Go Fund Me pages set up to help finance their ultimate ambitions of representing Great Britain at the Winter Olympics.
Despite the financial challenges facing the Welsh pairing and their relative inexperience in the sport, they are making names for themselves on the bobsleigh circuit.
Nicoll, who was the reserve brakewoman for Team GB at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, only made the switch to the front seat in November of last season and had just four starts as a two-woman pilot to her name prior to Friday’s race.
Placide is even newer to the sport, having only joined the team this summer and experienced her first race day as recently as last December.
“I’m so happy with today,” said Nicoll following the duo’s victory in the iconic Swiss winter sports resort.
“And I’m not just happy with the win – I’m happy with the times we put down at the start and at the finish.
“We put together a really good push and a really good drive and, when you’ve got both those things together in this sport, you’re going to do well.
“We came here knowing that we were capable of this, and we showed that on the day. We feel like we’re now ready to go on to the World Cup circuit and compete against the best in the world.”
Despite being a relatively new partnership, 27-year-old Nicoll and 19-year-old Placide recorded the fastest starts in both heats and led at every single one of the 12 timing splits across two runs in Switzerland.
They finished more than six tenths of a second clear of the Belgian team in second and a full second ahead of the Polish team in third.
No British crew had won gold on the Europa Cup circuit in any bobsleigh discipline since Nicoll’s former pilot, Mica McNeill, and another former Welsh sprinter Mica Moore took top spot in Winterberg in January 2017.
Nicoll, who represented Wales in the shot put at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, has been successfully continuing her athletics career alongside bobsleigh since first taking to the ice in 2020.
After getting a taste for top international bobsleigh competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, she switched to pilot duties at the end of the Beijing Olympic cycle.
Nicoll made her front seat debut with sixth and seventh place finishes in back-to-back Europa Cup monobob races in Lillehammer in November 2022.
In December of last year, she teamed up with Cardiff Athletics sprinter Placide for their first race together, also in Lillehammer, where Nicoll piloted them to a bronze medal.
Later that month, Nicoll also enjoyed monobob success, making her World Cup debut in Igls, Austria, where she finished ninth.
She kicked off this year by finishing 10th at a World Cup event in St Moritz.
Prior to Nicoll’s gold medal winning performance with Placide on Friday, she celebrated silver in the monobob discipline the previous day – missing top spot by 13 hundredths of a second having jumped up from fourth at halfway to second at the conclusion of the two runs.
Nicoll and Placide now look forward to World Cup action later this week in Lillehammer on January 27 and 28, where Nicoll will also be in monobob action.
“I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks – we’re literally heading to Lillehammer now so there’s no rest for the wicked,” said Nicoll. “I’m going to try and get a nap in on the way!”
Away from Europe’s bobsleigh runs, both Nicoll and Placide are working hard to fund their challenge at the highest level of a sport notoriously expensive to compete in at the highest level.
Both have Go-Fund me pages and are actively seeking backers in what has been seen as something of a Cinderella sport when it comes to funding in the UK.
Nicoll, who is from Welshpool, has attracted sponsorship from the likes of Oswestry-based Cymru Premier football club The New Saints.
Following Friday’s gold medal winning performance, Nicoll said: “I’m very grateful for the support I’ve had from private sponsors, from the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association, from UK Sport and from everyone involved. That’s why we’re doing well – it doesn’t just start on race day.
“It’s all the work that’s already gone in behind the scenes over the last couple of years getting me to where I am now so I’m hoping we carry this rhythm going forwards.”
It’s a first bobsleigh for @adelenicoll & Kya Placide as they take the win in St Moritz! It’s also the first Europa Cup for Bobsleigh since 2017 #bobsleigh #congratulations pic.twitter.com/mbSCgyx9wD
— British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association (@The_BBSA) January 19, 2024
