COUNTY DURHAM bobsleigh driver Mica McNeill has launched a £30,000 fundraising drive after an overspend at the crisis-hit British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association (BBSA) threatened to scupper her dream of competing at next year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

McNeill, who is from Consett, is Britain’s number one female bobsleigh driver, and having won a gold medal at January’s Junior World Championships, the 23-year-old should be spending this winter competing on the World Cup series ahead of a maiden appearance at the Olympics.

Instead, she was called into a meeting at BBSA headquarters last week, and told by the organisation’s chief executive and performance director that an overspend meant they were no longer able to fund a women’s team.

The BBSA are the country’s best-funded winter sports governing body, receiving £10m of public funding in the four-year cycle to the Pyeongchang Games, but while they will continue to support three men’s teams in the build-up to the Olympics, they have effectively cut McNeill and her two female team-mates adrift.

“To say we’re disappointed would be a massive understatement,” said McNeill. “We’re frustrated, angry, everything you can think of. We’ve devoted the last four or five years of our lives to this, and now five months before the Olympics are supposed to start, we’re being told the money has run out.

“They’ve described it as an overspend, but there’s no accountability or explanation of what’s happened. We were just told ‘That’s it – the money isn’t there’. It’s disgraceful really. It’s been my dream to compete at the Winter Olympics ever since I started out in the sport, and I even bought my own bobsleigh to try to make it happen. We’re not going to give up now.”

While McNeill has achieved the British Olympic Association’s qualifying criteria for Pyeongchang, she has to be in the top-30 in the World Cup rankings to secure a place at the Games.

She has launched a fundraising appeal to try to enable her to make it to the first World Cup event at the start of November, and is hoping to raise £30,000 in order to guarantee her participation at the Olympics.

“If we can get to £30,000, then it’s do-able,” she said. “The problem is that it’s pretty hard to cut corners in this sport. In order to be competitive at that first World Cup event, we really need to be on the ice a week or so before to make sure we’re in shape.

“It’s sad that it’s come to this, but we’re not going to throw in the towel. Too many people have devoted too much time and attention for me to give up without a fight.”

To help support Mica’s fundraising appeal, visit www.gofundme.com/teammcneill