Mentally, it’s very, very tiring because things are coming towards you at high speed and you have to have quick reactions. Sometimes you get involved in ‘panic steering’ – although in theory you should never touch the ice, sometimes you know you have to do it and you just dip down a toe to reposition yourself.”Although you never lose vision on the way down, you can only see three or four metres in front of you at any time. You have to feel the pressure of a bend coming on – you can feel it in your body.”The only way you can get to know a run properly is to get off the sled and walk it several times. I can close my eyes now and go out on any track in the world that I’ve been down over the last two years, and I’ll know every bend. That information is very, very well maintained in your head.”Equally well maintained are the sleds on which Coomber and her British colleagues make their perilous – sorry, straightforward – descents. Britain’s No 1 male skeleton competitor, Dr Kristan Bromley, is an engineer based at Bath University who is working on a project to optimise sled design and performance.In order to replicate the Olympic track at Salt Lake City, Bromley shipped home four five-gallon drums of water from the venue last winter and re-frozen in the Bath lab for test runs.The value of that planning was borne out two weeks ago as Coomber flourished on a brief training trip to the Salt Lake track before moving on to Calgary, where she finished third in the third of the World Cup events on Friday.Simon Timson, a sports scientist who now acts as a road manager for the British team, likens the fit of human ability to technology in skeleton to that of Formula One motor racing. “In terms of technology, you have to have the equivalent of a McLaren or a Ferrari to have a chance of winning But without a talented driver you can’t do that The thing about Alex is that she is the complete package.

She is physically and mentally suited to all the demands the event makes.”Coomber acknowledges as much, although she still seems mystified by the paradoxical processes which occur in the event.”The faster you go, the slower it feels,” she says “Your brain slows everything down so much on fast runs. If you turn up at a track you don’t know it seems very fast at first – everything flashes by.”But by the time you have got to know every single inch of the course and you are travelling two or three seconds faster, you seem to have time.”One other element is required for Coomber’s Olympic quest, however: durability. In the course of the last month she has had to manage a back injury which stemmed from a muscle spasm and caused her pelvis to twist. When someone like Coomber uses the word “agony” you know it is likely to be justified. But her performances this season continue to underline the fact that here is a British high flyer made of the Right Stuff.. Nick Dundee, a one-time Gold Cup prospect, may have run his last race after finishing unsound when making a winning comeback at Cork yesterday.

His trainer, Edward O’Grady, said of the injury-plagued nine-year-old, who had been off the track since February: “Subject to talking to his owners, retirement is now an option.”

Nick Dundee, a one-time Gold Cup prospect, may have run his last race after finishing unsound when making a winning comeback at Cork yesterday. He will next go to Leopardstown for a similar event and was cut to 12-1, from 16-1, by Ladbrokes for the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham, his prime target according to his trainer, Michael O’Brien.Paul Carberry, who had been setting the pace with 72 wins in Ireland’s jockeys’ championship, will be out of action for several days after bruising a leg in a fall from Bandon Valley in the handicap hurdle. He was taken to hospital for an X-ray examination but returned to the course aided by a walking stick.* Norman Williamson will decide today whether to appeal against a four-day ban for using his whip with excessive force on Mr Markham at Cheltenham on Friday. The ban would rule him out of the Christmas cards.* Towcester will hold an inspection at 7am for today’s card due to the threat of frost.. Japan captured all three Group One races at the Hong Kong International meeting yesterday, just denying Frankie Dettori and Godolphin for two of the prizes. Before a 70,000 crowd at Sha Tin racecourse, Agnes Digital held Godolphin’s Tobougg by a head in the £1m Hong Kong Cup, with the winner aiming next at the Dubai World Cup.