Olympic gold medalist Greg Rutherford has backed pilot Brad Hall to bounce back from his Beijing nightmare and lead the four-man bobsleigh team to a medal.
Hall and Nick Gleeson suffered a horror crash crashed on their penultimate run in the two-man event, but despite the sled overturning towards the end of the run in Yanqing both emerged unscathed.
The incident continued the theme of Team GB enduring a difficult Winter Olympic s in Beijing, with a number of medal prospects falling by the wayside.
Rutherford, working as a pundit for discovery+, now hopes Hall can complete a 'wonderful story' by responding with a vengeance this weekend - with the team's first run due 1.30am BST.
He also refuted the notion that the pair had under-performed because of their previous error.
“[Bobsleigh] isn’t a hugely funded sport in general, so we're always going to be struggling," he said.
"So I don't want to put any form of dampener on Team GB and say it's not good enough or anything like that at all because that's not the thing.
“Everybody goes to Olympic Games to do the best they possibly can. They have to deal with pressure their own way. And I really hope for Brad, it would just be a wonderful story for a sport that effectively isn't funded in any way shape or form.
"To then have him come down and get us a medal would be a beautiful thing. I really hope that happens.”
The expectation is something Rutherford himself can associate with. He famously won gold at the London 2012 Olympics, but fours previously in Beijing, was part of an athletics team that were also perceived to be struggling.
“I remember being in a situation in 2008 as a very young athlete, and somebody coming up to me and saying – I’d just qualified for the final and saying ‘it’s all on you, we need you to get us a medal so we can start the medals flowing for Great Britain.’
"It was said in a really nice way to me, it was never said to add pressure, but I’ll never forget the amount of pressure I felt. And all of a sudden I thought I need to be the one to do it's now down to me.
“Now, I don't know, of course whether or not Brad is feeling that at all. But I would imagine knowing that he is a medal hope, there is an awful lot of pressure on him. And of course it hasn't gone that well for Team GB, and you would like to see more medals.
"But I think what we've seen across winter sports, and obviously I've been lucky enough to be covering it for Discovery Eurosport, is that you see the levels and the progression and how much people are changing."
Of course, Rutherford, 35, had ambitions of his own to be in a bobsled in China, having joined the Team GB set-up in 2021 and competed in World Cup events.
And after coming up short of selection, he admits that watching on as a pundit has tested him.
“When the first runs for the two-man went down, and I wouldn’t have been in the two, I would have been in the four – but just watching the bobs go, it was very mixed emotions.
“But the irony is from my point of view, which is kind of sad as well, even if our crew had qualified, because of this herniation in my neck I wouldn't have been able to have gone.
“Imagine that situation, it would have been even harder for me if I see my team that I was meant to be a part of sliding with and I wasn’t able to be there."
Despite the longing, he's been able to back his colleagues as a supporter.
"I've always been a massive champion of winter sports. So I put my fan hat on, use my ability to talk about the sport, focus on that and try not to think too much about what could have been.”
- Watch All of Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on discovery+, Eurosport and Eurosport app.
