With five months to go until the Olympics you just want to get to Pyeongchang with no big distractions or dramas.
That’s certainly not going to be possible for the GB women’s bobsleigh team.
It must have come as devastating news when they were told their funding was to be stopped so close to the Games.
Mica McNeill and Mica Moore have had to resort to Crowdfunding to keep their dream alive.
I saw both of the girls at the get-together Team GB had a few weeks ago and you don’t expect this sort of obstacle to be put in your way so late on.
I’ve got no doubts that they’ll raise the money they need, and probably more, because the British public will support their cause.
They’ll get plenty of publicity if and when they get to South Korea as well.
And this will have fired them up to prove the people wrong who have cut their funding.
They will have to be very strong mentally, though.
I don’t know the ins and outs of why this decision has been made but their governing body has said that they have focused on “winning medals”, with the implication being that they don’t think the two-woman bob are capable of doing that.
That would be the biggest blow for me – that people in charge of your sport have lost faith in you to deliver.
I really do wish them well and it would be one of the great underdog stories if they can bring back a medal.
* It’s nice to be back home with our first title of the season having been won.
There’s a long way to go before the Olympics but it feels like our two-week trip to Canada has got us off to a flying start.
A semi-final and then a win feels pretty good. It’s been a while since we started as well as that and it takes a lot of pressure off.
You get told time and time again from when you were a junior that “it isn’t over until the last stone is thrown” and our final against Anna Hasselborg was proof of that.
To be three down going into the last end and taking all three and then a steal in the extra end doesn’t happen very often but shows why you keep fighting until the very end.
You only need one major mistake from your opponent and then it’s all about jumping on it, which we did.
To win in those circumstances must be like equalising in the 90th minute in football and then scoring in injury-time.
Body language can be so important when the pressure is on and we could see that they were getting uncomfortable – shoulders start slumping and voices get more screechy. But it’s one thing noticing it and another taking advantage.
It’s really satisfying to be as clinical as we were this early in the season and confirms what we thought in the summer, that we’re heading in the right direction.
Now we’ve got a couple of weeks back home working on a few things before our next stop in Switzerland.
