Former rugby player Matt Weston believes his background is perfect to help him excel with the British skeleton squad.

Tunbridge Wells’s Matt Weston is among the British contingent vying for the chance to head to Beijing for the Winter Olympics in February 2022.

They sprint 40 metres before leaping onto a sled face-first, snaking through ice-coated twists and turns at over 80 mph. Those with athletic backgrounds seem like a natural fit given the running component but former rugby player Weston, who played for Kent and Sevenoaks RFC, insisted the pitch provided excellent preparation.

“I focus a lot more on being in a team,” said Weston, whose favourite film is - appropriately - The Fast and the Furious. “I think it helps quite a lot.

"I think we’re all very good team players. It also helps in the fact that you’re kind of used to getting beaten up as well.

“Going down the track, some of these ice walls aren’t that smooth, so you do get beaten up quite a bit. So having that rugby background and getting used to being knocked around a bit is quite good.”

Team GB has stood on every Olympic podium since skeleton was reintroduced after a 54-year absence at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, and in July received an extra £90,000 from UK Sport to support their preparation for Beijing and beyond.

Alex Coomber, racing with a broken wrist, won bronze for Britain in Utah, kicking off an astonishing run for British women, with Shelley Rudman sliding to Turin silver before Amy Williams took the top step at Vancouver 2010. Lizzy Yarnold became the first British Olympian to defend a title at PyeongChang in 2018, where she shared the podium with third-placed teammate Laura Deas.

Dom Parsons set another milestone in South Korea, becoming the first British man to win a skeleton medal, a bronze, in over 70 years.

And this year, the medal buzz seems to be around the British men - Weston, Marcus Wyatt and Craig Thompson - to pick up where the now-retired Parsons left off.

“I think that just adds to a lot of the excitement and positive feelings toward this season,” said the 24-year-old Weston, who is bidding to add to the 1,000-plus Olympic and Paralympic medals achieved by TeamGB since National Lottery funding to elite sport started in 1997.

“We’re in a really good position physically, and in terms of the cycle, going into this year all getting World Cup medals last year, we’re in a really, really strong place and I’m excited to see what we can do.”

To become Olympians, Weston and his teammates will need to finish in the top 25 in the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation’s world rankings, with a number of critical events taking place in the coming months.

They had a chance to test out the new dragon-inspired Olympic track at a test event last month - Wyatt walked away with silver, while Weston and Thompson finished 17th and 19th, respectively - both ahead of reigning Olympic champion Yun Sungbin.

It was a tiny taste of what the future could hold but one that more than whet Weston’s appetite to ensure it wasn’t a one-off.

Weston, who is one of over 1,000 athletes who are able to train full-time, access the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering technology, science and medical support thanks to vital National Lottery funding, added: “The fact that I’ve been on the Olympic track now is amazing. There’s so much you can gain from it as well.

“They’ve created something that’s just out of this world in terms of how grand and magnificent it is. Everything is taken care of, every box is ticked, it’s unreal. I was almost gobsmacked when I went there.”

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