Mica McNeill's Olympic dream is back on track - as funding total tops the £28,000 mark

MICA McNEILL spent her birthday polishing her bobsleigh at a garage in Annfield Plain. It might have been an unconventional way to celebrate turning 24, but the aspiring Winter Olympian would not have had it any other way.

It has been quite some week for McNeill, whose Olympic dream is back on track despite the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association’s (BBSA) decision to cut her funding just five months before the start of next year’s Games in Pyeongchang.

• READ THIS: Mica McNeill is the victim of a shambolic organisation that is no longer fit for purpose

A victim of chronic mismanagement at the BBSA, McNeill set up a crowd-funding website in an attempt to raise the £30,000 needed to enable her to qualify for the Olympics via this winter’s World Cup series. As of last night, the total raised stood at £28,200.

It is understood the BBSA are preparing to backtrack and offer McNeill a reduced sum to help her train and compete in the run-up to the Games, while senior officials at UK Sport are also believed to be examining the situation after the BBSA initially stripped funding from the women’s team, while continuing to support three men’s squads.

Now, however, none of that matters. McNeill has the funds required to compete in the World Cup, and can focus her attention on becoming an Olympian. As she rightly puts it, her sled will be propelled by “people power” as it hurtles down the track in Pyeongchang.

“It’s been amazing,” said Consett-based McNeill, who was crowned World Junior champion in January. “It’s been really encouraging because we’ve realised the support that is out there. So many people have been getting behind us, and that’s something you don’t realise is there until you need it.

“It’s been a massive surprise. Bobsleigh is not a well-known sport, so you go into something like this thinking, ‘Do people know what bobsleigh is? Are they really going to care?’ It’s been surprising, but it’s been really encouraging to hear all the support and have all the nice messages. For everyone to have donated so much money has been incredible really.

“It’s been a complete mixture of people. There have been a couple of big donors, and we’re really grateful for that, but there’s also been a whole host of random people donating £5 here or £10 there and that’s been amazing to see. I can spot an odd friend or family member as I look through the list, but as I scroll through, I have no idea who most of the people are. So for them to have given money and believed in my story and wanted to support me, it’s just incredible.”

McNeill has spent most of the last week juggling a host of media commitments in an attempt to raise her public profile and ensure her funding campaign gained as much traction as possible.

She has tried to stick to her training – “I’ve been doing stuff at the leisure centre at Consett, who have helped me since I was really young, and I’ve been running on an old school running track behind the back of what used to be Blackfyne (School)” – but that hardly represents an ideal preparation for what will be the most important few months of her career.

Along with team-mate Mica Moore, she has achieved the qualifying criteria for the British Olympic Association, but still needs a top-30 ranking on the World Cup series in order to secure a place in Pyeongchang.

That should be well within her capabilities given she was ranked 13 in the world last year, but after a whirlwind week, she freely admits it is time to get her “game head” back on as the opening World Cup event in the American resort of Lake Placid draws near.

“We have to step up the training now because these people are giving us money to be ready,” she said. “We have to be ready when the moment comes. Once all this dies down and we get our plan together, we want to be solely focusing on the Olympic Games and performing to the best of our ability.

“We’ve been in England all summer away from bobsleigh, and you get rusty. We want to get back on the ice and have a good preparation before the World Cup comes around, because as soon as that first World Cup competition starts, that’s the first opportunity to start trying to get a good start rank at the Olympic Games. That’s really important.”

McNeill’s Olympic selection will have to ratified by the BBSA, so while the governing body’s decision to axe her funding still rankles, there will have to be some form of a rapprochement in the next few weeks.

She has held a number of discussions with BBSA officials, and crucially boasts a strong relationship with the organisation’s new head coach, Lee Johnston, who has worked with her extensively in the past.

“They’re (BBSA) in charge of our selection, but with all the changes that have been made, I’m really happy with the set-up now,” she said. “Lee has been appointed as the new head coach, and he’s the one that took me to the Youth Olympics when I won a silver medal, and he’s the coach we had at the Junior World Championships when we won gold.

“I’m really happy with that relationship, and it’s all starting to come together. We’re trying to build that relationship back up with British Bobsleigh and move forward together now. There’s been a lot of negative things happening, and I have been let down, but now we need to draw a line under it and move on. I need to focus on performance now, not all the drama that has come around in the last few weeks.”

That drama has clearly captured the public imagination though, and whether she likes it or not, McNeill has become a poster girl for women’s sport.

“We have had a fight, but it’s important as a woman competing in sport that we do have the numbers and we do have women’s teams competing at things like the Olympics,” she said. “I think as a boy growing up, you have a lot of different sporting role models and a lot of different options that are open to you.

“That hasn’t always been the case for girls, so I think it would have been a really negative message if we hadn’t been able to compete at the Olympics. I think it’s important that girls are going to be able to see us there and think, ‘You know what – that looks like fun, maybe I could do that too’.”