COUNTY DURHAM skeleton sensation Ashlyn Bland hopes advice from Olympic medallist Laura Deas can fire her to a successful first full Europa Cup season.

The Bishop Auckland 24 year-old has prioritised her mental preparation during the off season, working closely with Deas, who bagged a brilliant bronze at Pyeongchang 2018.

Bland, who is now based in Trowbridge, close to British Skeleton's high-performance centre, joined the skeleton programme just three years ago and despite her rapid progress, she knows the guidance of her elders will be crucial during the next phase of her fledgling career.

“Laura has done a lot of mentoring with me this year about how she gets in the right mindset, which has been really useful given her success in the past,” said Bland, who has been selected to be part of Aldi’s Rising Stars programme, an initiative with SportsAid that provides talented young athletes with financial support, recognition and personal development opportunities.

“We've done a lot of work around performance mindset. One of the things I struggled with a little bit last year was worrying too much about other people and what they were doing.

“She's helped to put a different perspective on it, and that you can only control what you can control.

“We’ve talked about positive affirmations and what you can tell yourself before the race to remind yourself that you've put in the work.

“That's really helped me, and that's going to be something that I definitely use this year to hopefully make myself feel confident going into race day.”

Each athlete on the Rising Stars programme, which was launched with SportsAid last year, receives funding to help towards costs such as travel, accommodation, equipment and nutrition, with Aldi also delivering workshop sessions on a range of topics to help nurture athletes for their sporting endeavours and beyond.

This includes top tips on healthy eating and performance nutrition, restful sleep, managing mental wellbeing, social media training and making the most of working with the media. 

Bland made her Europa Cup debut last season, racing internationally across Europe, and hopes she can take the next steps towards the 2026 Winter Olympics with a promising string of runs.

“The big one for me is getting that experience and that knowledge of some tracks that I’ve not been to as much,” she said.

“That's my number one aim. I've also done a lot of work this summer around the push aspect of skeleton.

“We’ve had six months focused on the physicality of skeleton and trying to get quicker.

“I'm hoping to move up the ranks a little bit with my start, and improve on my driving to try and put myself in a good place ahead of 2026 and hopefully amongst the other girls on the team.”

After a summer away from the ice, Bland is looking forward to her return to track and putting her hard work into practice.

“It’s rare to not be doing a sport for so long,” she said. “Having put in a lot of work, you want to get on ice and just see all the improvements that you've been working towards over summer.

“I'm excited, obviously. I am heading into the third year of the programme now so it's the point where you start to see major improvements and I saw a lot of those last year.

“We've got the Olympics in 2026 and I’ve got that as an aim to work toward, so I'm excited to see where I stack up on the field this year. Hopefully there will be some noticeable improvements.”

* Aldi is the Official Supermarket Partner of Team GB and ParalympicsGB and have partnered with Team GB since 2015, ParalympicsGB since 2022 and will be supporting them through to Paris 2024