Dom Parsons started skeleton with a hangover and cannot wait to get another one after rising to the occasion in dramatic fashion to claim Great Britain’s first men’s skeleton medal in 70 years in Pyeongchang.
The 30-year-old, whose only World Cup podium was in Calgary in 2013, thought he had blown his unlikely chance when a late mistake in his final run saw him slip below Olympic Athlete of Russia’s Nikita Tregubov with two sliders still to go.
But incredibly, it was five-times world champion Martins Dukurs who crumpled under pressure, a series of uncharacteristic errors dumping the Latvian 0.11 behind Parsons, and all but confirming a bronze for the Briton behind the runaway winner, South Korean Yun Sung-bin.
Parsons’ route to his medal had ignominious beginnings. He first set eyes on a skeleton in 2007 when he was cajoled into attending a push-start trial by a friend despite freely admitting he was “feeling the effects of too much fun the night before.”
But he impressed enough to be invited to further GB camps, and began a turbulent career trajectory which saw him axed from the squad on two occasions due to funding issues, as well as a series of career-threatening injuries.
All those concerns and disappointments melted away at the Olympic Sliding Centre in Pyeongchang, where Parsons’ emotions switched from agony to ecstasy after Dukurs crossed the line, and he fell into the arms of his emotional parents.
Parsons admitted: “It was a bit of a rollercoaster after the fourth run. I was devastated – I thought I’d binned it totally.
“I made a couple of mistakes down there that dropped me behind Nikita (Tregubov) and Martins (Dukurs), and unfortunately for him he made a couple of mistakes which cost him two spots.
“Before he went down he was the last person I would have expected to make those mistakes. I’m very grateful that I got lucky. It doesn’t seem real to me. Now I am going to make sure I enjoy the rest of the Games.”
Despite revealing he had been suffering from an adductor muscle injury which ruled him out of making full starts until the eve of the race, Parsons impressed sufficiently in training runs to suggest an unlikely medal challenge might be on the cards.
In fact so impressive were his times that they led to grumblings of discontent from officials of other nations who questioned the legality of the British athletes’ aerodynamic skin-suits – concerns which were swiftly dismissed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation.
Parsons went into the final day in fourth place, three hundredths of a second off bronze, but a clean third run edged him above Tregubov and set up the dramatic finale at a venue packed with fans desperate to witness the host nation’s first Olympic skeleton gold.
Parsons, who is studying a PhD at Bath University focusing on combustion in turbo-charged engines, is the first British man to win an Olympic skeleton medal since John Crammond also took bronze in 1948.
Crammond was a stockbroker and a qualified pilot who retired after his triumph, becoming a journalist for the Observer and sailing his yacht around the Mediterranean.
Parsons has more modest ambitions, saying: “What happens next is I go to Australia for three and a half weeks, take a bit of time deciding what to do next, and spend a bit of time with my girlfriend and her family in Brisbane.”
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