Issy Fassnidge: Riding Skeleton to Glory

Team GB skeleton racer Isabella (Issy) Fassnidge has taken an unconventional path to competing on the world stage. The 20-year-old only started skeleton racing three years ago, quickly rising to compete internationally. Issy sat down in an exclusive interview with SportsBoom to discuss her path towards skeleton, as well as future goals in the sport .

Fassnidge was introduced to the adrenaline-fuelled sport through the UK Sport program "Girls for Gold," which aims to identify talented female athletes. She recalled the process:
“I signed up for Girls for Gold's skeleton trials. I started when I was 17, during my A-Levels. I went to training camps in Bath where we did lots of physical and mental tests. Ultimately, seven of us were selected to go to Norway.”

After camps and trials, Fassnidge made the national team. She recalled her first run down the track in Lillehammer:
“I was excited to try this amazing sport in another country during time off from school.”
Now she's hooked, and there's no looking back. 

Competing as a skeleton racer requires tremendous fitness, precision and courage. Fassnidge steers her sled at speeds up to 90 mph using subtle shifts in her head, shoulders, knees and even toes.

She's also one of the top women push athletes, sprinting to accelerate the sled at the start. Fassnidge credits the Team GB coaching for their pushing expertise:
“The GB skeleton team has had more funding than the bobsled team. Our equipment is pretty good...we tend to do better on pushing tracks.”

Although Team GB might not have the funding, or early career starts like the German team, Fassnidge believes Britain can compete at the top level. 
“One thing that GB kind of pride their selves on over the Germans….Germans can slide better, you maybe would say, but GB can push better.”

For many women in the skeleton, weight can become an issue, as its accumulated with the weight of the sleigh, and can have a detrimental effect on certain body types. The sport's weight limits have forced her into extreme calorie deficits at times, which she admits hinders her performance:
“It’s pretty much every week just eating as little as I can, while trying to get the fuel I need, which doesn't really happen. I have to work so hard to stay under the limit, at the cost of being hungry and not performing as well as I could."

Fassnidge hopes regulations will change to better accommodate athletes’ health and natural physiques, but admits that the weight balance can be tricky:  
“you could argue that when there wasn't a weight limit for skeleton, that's how the heavier people were winning because of the momentum and the weight that they could carry with them onto the sled.”
Hopefully this issue can be addressed across women's sport, so that athletic starvation is never a solution.