MOVING ON...

Hi there
Well, right now I'm in Lake Placid preparing and training ahead of the Olympic Winter Games and it's great to have the time and space to do everything I can to be in great shape for the biggest event in our sport. From here we move on to Calgary where for once we'll be spending time with athletes from other sports and with the guys from the British Olympic Association.
I normally travel with quite a small team, but now it's much bigger and there's a great feeling of being part of Team GB and representing my country. Of course, I still spend a lot of time with the skeleton team and with people like Adam, Shelley and Kristan.
Over the past couple of years, a lot has been written about the relationship I have with Shelley - too much has been written really. Read some of the papers and you'd imagine we're at each other's throats, but that's really not the case. The problem is that people have tried to build our rivalry into something all engrossing. If I say anything about Shelley, it gets written up as being a dig against her. But that's not what I'm interested in doing and always annoys me when it's presented that way - so let's clear things up once and for all. Shelley and I are team-mates, but we're also rival athletes. We're both going all out to win races and slide as fast as we can. True, we're not close friends, but we don't have to be, and I don't think either of us see that as a problem. We rub along just fine. Both of us share the same ambition - to be the fastest skeleton athlete in the world. We're both totally focused on performance, and on chasing success at the Games. Yes, Shelley is my rival, but so are lots of other women athletes. I want to beat Shelley just like I want to beat Mellisa Hollingsworth or Kerstin Szymkowiak. I want to beat everyone! So that's it. No wars, no fights, no big rows and no back-stabbing. Just a normal, healthy rivalry between two athletes.
Now I've got that off my chest, I want to turn my whole attention on to the Games now. If I'm going to fulfil my potential, I need to be a hundred per cent focused on getting my preparation perfect and peaking at the right time. If I can do that, I know I can deliver one of the best performances of my career!
See you soon