Australia has won their first ever medal in a sliding event at the Winter Olympics after Jackie Narracott won silver in the women’s skeleton.
In a remarkable result, the 31-year-old from Queensland finished behind Germany’s Hannah Neise to win Australia’s most unexpected Winter Olympic medal at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre in Beijing.
The Beijing Winter Olympics is now Australia’s most successful Winter Olympics ever and takes our medal tally to four with one gold, two silver and a bronze.
“It’s still so surreal … absolute elation!” said Narracott following her record run down the ice.
“Words can’t describe it. We’ve never won a sliding sport medal, so for me to be it… Creating your dream twice in two races, it doesn’t get any better”.
Nobody expected Narracott to be fighting for a medal in the skeleton race, especially considering Australia does not have any training facilities available. Narracott is based in England and travels to Europe and Kores for training.
So, could the success of our latest silver medalist inspire future generations to take up the exciting sport of skeleton? Narracott definitely thinks it’s possible.
“I’m hoping it will get some more girls into skeleton,” Narracott said.
“We used to have a program in Australia so to have some more girls back in and for it not to end with me would be absolutely unreal.”
In what must be an interesting situation, Narracott is coached by her husband Dom Parsons, himself a successful skeleton racer after winning bronze for Great Britain at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
The banter has already started for Narracott.
“Silver beats bronze every day of the week,” she laughed.
The women’s skeleton program started perfectly for Narracott as she stormed to the lead at the halfway point of the competition after two runs. Following her third run, she fell to second behind eventual gold medalist Hannah Neise.
In her fourth and final run, Narracott recorded a time of one minute 2.11 seconds, however Neise flew down the ice in a time of 1:01.63 to claim the gold medal by only 0.62 of a second.
Narracott’s silver medal may have been unexpected, however she comes from an extraordinary Olympic family so anything was possible in Beijing.
Narracott is the niece of Paul Narracott, who made Australian Olympic history after he became the first Aussie to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. At the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984 he competed in sprinting, while at the Winter Olympics at Albertville in 1992 he raced in the bobsleigh event.
Narracott followed her uncle’s footsteps and started off competing on the track, before switching to bobsleigh and finally ending up in skeleton racing.
As a Winter Olympic silver medalist in skeleton, it’s fair to say that she made the right choice.
