Chris Tomlinson swaps the long jump pit for the bobsleigh track

PLENTY of people decide to take up a new challenge when they enter retirement. Learning a foreign language perhaps, or maybe tackling the overgrown back garden.

Chris Tomlinson has taken things to the extreme. Not content with growing old gracefully after calling time on his athletics career, the Teessider has decided to hurtle down a hill at speeds of almost 100mph.

Since taking part in his final competitive long jump competition at the British Athletics Championships in June, Tomlinson has been training with the British bobsleigh team in Bath.

The 35-year-old freely admits he does not know where his change of focus will take him. For once, though, this is a case of a sportsman being happy to see his career go downhill fast.

“The people at British Bobsleigh have been asking me to try the sport for a couple of years now,” said Tomlinson, who is a former World Indoor silver medallist in the long-jump pit. “But in the past I’ve always been 100 per cent focused on my jumping.

“They look for people who are fit and strong, but you’ve also got to be pretty big too so physically I guess I’m probably the ideal candidate.

“I’d been retired for a couple of months, and I was really missing the training. I’ve got lots of things going on – coaching, personal training – but I just felt as though I wanted something else to get my teeth into.

“So I got talking to a few people again, and thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to give this a go’. I’ve been having regular chats since then, and I’ve been down to Bath a few times where British Bobsleigh have their high-performance base.

“I’ve done all the tests and been down the push slope a few times. I’m yet to actually get into a proper bobsleigh that’s going full speed, but I’m obviously not going to be driving, I’ll be one of the guys pushing from the rear. I’m sure it’ll be a bit of an adrenaline rush if I get to do it properly out on the ice, but we’re still a fair way away from that yet.”

Be that as it may, the history of the British bobsleigh team suggests it is far from fanciful to imagine Tomlinson enjoying success in the sport.

Olympic gold medallist Jason Gardener made a successful switch to bobsleigh and almost qualified to compete at the 2010 Winter Olympics, while another former sprinter, Craig Pickering, finished in the top 20 at a World Cup event partnering British number one John Jackson and might well have competed at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi had he not suffered a back injury.

As well as targeting Tomlinson, the British bobsleigh authorities have also persuaded Mark Lewis-Francis to join the set-up ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The team already boasts Joel Fearon, who ran the 100m in 9.96secs earlier this summer, having previously been part of the four-man bobsleigh team that finished fifth in Sochi.

“There are a lot of transferable skills in bobsleigh, so it’s actually not that unusual for people to move across from a different sport,” said Tomlinson. “Mark Lewis-Francis has been down there with me, and whereas you tend to hit your peak quite young as an athlete, the optimum age for someone pushing a bobsleigh tends to be more in your 30s.

“Tyson Gay has made the switch over in the States, and he recently competed in their national championships. You’ve also got Ryan Bailey doing the same thing, so it’s becoming a fairly well established path for former athletes to take.”

Tomlinson will continue his training over the next couple of months, in an attempt to gain a place on the British squad for this winter’s competitive programme.

If he makes it, he could find himself linking up with Middlesbrough-born John Baines, who competed as a brakeman in both the two-man and four-man bobs at the Sochi Olympics.

“I know John fairly well and he was one of the people who really persuaded me to give this a go,” said Tomlinson. “He’s doing fantastically in the sport, and it’s only when you go down to Bath and see the set-up down there that you realise the level the British team is operating at.

“It has to be one of the best set-ups in the world. On the outside, it’s easy to think, ‘Oh it’s just bobsleigh – the British team are probably way behind everyone else’. But it’s state-of-the-art and the standard of the people on the squad is so high.

“I’ve got no expectations about how far I might get – I’m just giving it a go and enjoying myself. I’m not getting paid to do any of this – it’s all self-funded – so at the moment it’s going to have to fit around the personal training stuff that’s really taking off.

“But I still have that competitive drive in me, so I’ll be taking it seriously. Maybe one day you’ll see me flying down the track properly.”