One Year to Go – Pat Sharples

We caught up with GB Snowsport Head Coach Pat Sharples with one year to go until the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.

How are the GB Snowsport team shaping up with 1 year to go until the Olympic Winter Games 2022?

I feel all the different teams from all the different disciplines are doing incredibly well considering the challenges they’ve faced over the last year. There’s obviously been many of the major competitions including Olympic qualifying events cancelled and a lot of on snow training missed due to Covid. But everyone is just getting on with it and preparing for Beijing 2022 the best we can.

When does the training start to ramp up in terms of hours and intensity in the lead up to the Games?

It never really stops to be honest as all our athletes have their own personal performance goals and targets. At the moment we’re in the middle of Olympic qualification and that’s been the main focus. But as mentioned before, there’s many events getting cancelled so our athletes are focusing on training.

What other types of training do the athletes do, other than their discipline, to prepare for the Games?

All our athletes have very different programs and their designed to suit what they need with regards to their performance plans. Strength and conditioning is obviously a huge part of this and something that many of our athletes have focused on even more than normal specially when we we’re limited with time on snow due to the pandemic.

Is it hard to keep the athletes motivated to train hard, do you have any tips on keeping motivated?

Our athletes, coaches, support staff are extremely good at keeping themselves motivated mainly because they’re so passionate and love what they do. I feel we’ve been incredibly lucky in these tough times as we’ve had goals to focus on which keeps you driving forward in a positive way.