PATH TO PYEONGCHANG: County Durham bobsleigh star Mica McNeill grows accustomed to her world turning upside down

Back in October, the Consett bobsleigh driver was told her dream of competing at the Winter Olympics was in tatters because her sport’s governing body could no longer afford to fund her. Cue a £30,000 funding drive, an embarrassing climb-down from the authorities, and a new profile as one of British winter sport’s biggest stars.

That was hard enough to deal with, but two weeks ago, McNeill found her best-laid plans being overturned once again. This time, though, the upheaval was literal rather than figurative.

Competing in a World Cup event in the German resort of Altenberg, McNeill and her partner, Mica Moore, were on track for a top-ten finish as they embarked on their second run. All was going well as they took the first turn cleanly, but as she pushed to try to get the best line possible halfway down the course, McNeill found herself tilting her sled marginally too far. With spectacular consequences.

Careering downhill at more than 70mph, McNeill and Moore were dragged along the track with their helmets bouncing off the ice as their sled tipped upside down. It looked horrific, and felt even worse. But fortunately, there was more damage to pride and ego than body or bobsleigh.

McNeill walked away from the crash, shaking her head in a mixture of annoyance and pain. Moore clambered out of the bobsleigh behind her, and within a couple of days, the pair were back on the ice training. They have already put the crash behind them – it would be impossible to return to high-speed action otherwise – but the incident nevertheless provided a timely reminder of the risks they take every time they head onto the ice, with the Winter Olympics now less than a month away.

“I’ve had a few crashes down the years, but that was probably the worst,” said McNeill, who first took up bobsleigh on the push-start track at Camp Hill in North Yorkshire. “Unfortunately, this is an extreme sport, and you can’t really avoid things like that happening.

“We’re driving at speeds of up to 90mph. To put that into perspective, it means we’re covering 30 metres every second. When you’re going at that speed, it only needs a tiny little error to have quite a big effect.

“You have to be so precise, and it only needs a tiny thing to go wrong – human error or a bit of equipment malfunctioning – and it’s impossible to correct it.

“That’s effectively what happened in Altenburg. Once you realise it’s gone wrong, it’s too late to do anything about it. So then it’s just a case of getting your head down, getting into a recovery position, and hoping for the best.

“You’re always told not to leave the sled when it’s sliding down like that, and the less movements you make, the better. It’s human instinct to want to lift your head up and try to see what’s happening, but you have to fight that to be able to look after yourself.”

At most, a bobsleigh driver probably only gets three opportunities to compete at a Winter Olympics, given that they only take place once every four years. McNeill is 24, so next month’s Games in Pyeongchang might well represent her best chance of competing for Britain on the biggest stage of all.

With that in mind, and given what happened in Germany, isn’t she tempted to swerve the final World Cup meeting of the winter in Konigssee this weekend in order to guarantee her fitness for the Olympics?

“Not at all,” she responded. “You can’t think like that. You can’t survive in our sport if you’re thinking, ‘I have to look after myself to make sure nothing goes wrong’.

“You have to push yourself to the limit every time, otherwise you’ll never succeed. And because we don’t get a lot of opportunity to compete on the ice in the rest of the year, every World Cup event is vital to us in terms of learning and improving.

“We’ll be going into this weekend’s race exactly the same as we’ve gone into all the other races we’ve been in together – wanting to win. We won’t have a single thought about the Olympics, even though we obviously know how close they are.”

The British team for the Winter Olympics is due to be finalised next week, and for all that she has achieved all the qualifying criteria to compete in Pyeonchang, McNeill will still need her place to be rubber-stamped by the governing body she so publicly embarrassed at the end of last year.

British Bobsleigh and Skeleton were justifiably pilloried for their decision to support their men’s teams while abandoning their women’s programme in the autumn, but have subsequently provided some support to McNeill and Moore, and insist they will welcome the duo onto their Olympic team.

“We’ve done everything we had to do,” said McNeill. “But you still don’t want to take anything for granted until you get that call saying you’re definitely going to the Olympics.

“You can’t really get too excited before that. We’ll be back in England next week, and then hopefully it’ll be a case of the selection falling into place and things cranking up for the Olympics from there. For now though, it’s still hard to look that far ahead.”

Thanks to everything that happened in the autumn, McNeill is likely to be one of the highest-profile members of the British team that will travel to South Korea. The BBC have already filmed a number of features with her, and she is likely to find herself in demand from the national and international media.

That will bring its own challenges, but having been bowled over by the extent of public support in the last few months, McNeill is not about to start complaining about a raised level of interest.

“I’m starting to see a few changes,” she said. “But that’s great. Hopefully, everyone who funded us will be able to see us at the Olympics and see what their money has gone towards.

“Everything we do is being supported by the public. The food I’m about to cook before training, the petrol for the van that takes the sled up the slope, the cost of getting back to Britain – it all comes out of the fund that was set up to support us. We’ll never forget that or take it for granted. It’s only thanks to everyone who gave us money that we can even think about going to the Olympics at all.”