Team Bath athletes Charlotte Longden and Will Scammell both finished a fine 12th overall when they represented Team GB in bobsleigh at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games.
Longden went first in the women’s monobob competition on Sunday and got progressively quicker over her two runs, reaching speeds of 125.4km/h to finish on a combined time of 2:30.20 – +3.36 seconds off the eventual winner Georgeta Popescu of Romania.
Charlotte Longden and Will Scammell (Photo: Team GB/Sam Mellish)
“I was happy with how my runs went,” said Longden, an A-level student at Marlborough College in Wiltshire who has only been training in bobsleigh at the University of Bath for a year.
“I could notice improvements on my second run from my first run so that’s all I can really ask for. For me this is just the start, I loved it, I loved this experience and just want to do more.”
The following day saw fellow 17-year-old Scammell, from Devizes, also place 12th overall in a combined time of 2:28.26. German Alexander Czudaj and Robert Andrei Nica from Romania shared the gold in a time of 2:24.80.
“I’ve done such a good run and I feel so proud of how I’ve done,” he said. “To finish close to the top 10 in the world is unbelievable. I think I’ve proved that even though I can’t train as much [as some of the other competitors] I’m up there with the best.”
Both Longden and Scammell were first introduced to the sport as track and field athletes with Team Bath Athletics Club who, like the British Bobsleigh & Skeleton Association, are based at the University’s Sports Training Village.
Visit www.teambath.com/bobsleigh to find out more about the bobsleigh programme at the University of Bath.
Courtesy of the Team Bath Press Office at Matchtight
