The British Story:

BOBSLEIGH

The Start of Something Special

While Great Britain can't claim to be the home of bobsleigh, it does have a strong case to be the founder of the sport. The invention of bobsleigh has been ascribed to a group of Englishmen on holiday in St Moritz in Switzerland in the late 1800s, while there are also pictures from the early 1880s of boys at Harrow School hurtling down snowy slopes on toboggans tied together.

Great Britain can also claim to have led the way in the development of the modern bobsleigh, which was produced by a small group of young engineers in Leeds prior to the 1980 Olympic Winter Games. 

It was a far cry from the original wooden sleds used in the sport’s early days and had many novel features, one of which was inspired by Concorde.

British Bobsleigh was officially formed in 1927 in New York as the UK governing body for the sport and in 1980 the association was incorporated to become the British Bobsleigh Association Ltd. The BBA merged with the British Bob Skeleton Association to become the BBSA in 2015.

Olympic Success

Men’s Bobsleigh was included in the first Winter Olympics in 1924 and has been a key part of the Games ever since. The sport has featured at every Olympiad bar the 1960 Games in California, with 2-man bobsleigh joining the party eight years after the 4-man in 1932.

Great Britain won gold at the 1964 Olympics, when Tony Nash and Robin Dixon achieved the ultimate accolade in Innsbruck. That success was preceded by a silver medal in the inaugural Games when Ralph Broome’s 4-man crew finished second in Chamonix and a bronze courtesy of Frederick McEvoy’s 4-man team in 1936. 

A second bronze medal followed in Nagano in 1998 courtesy of Sean Olsson, Dean Ward, Courtney Rumbolt and Paul Attwood, before a third arrived retrospectively in 2019 after the disqualification of two Russian sleds from the Sochi Games in 2014. John Jackson, Bruce Tasker, Stu Benson and Joel Fearon finished fifth in Russia but were upgraded to a podium place almost six years later.

Women’s bobsleigh became an Olympic Sport in 2002 and, although GB await our first Olympic medal, British women won World Championship gold via Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke in 2009.

Global Glory

Great Britain have enjoyed plenty of success on the world stage outside of the Olympic environment, too, with teams beating the biggest and best sliding nations in the world despite not having an ice track of our own here in the UK.

Medals have been won on all the international circuits and across all disciplines, with World Championship medals first being celebrated via Dennis Field’s 4-man team in 1931 and continuing in the current cycle through Brad Hall and co, while a World Championship gold was won in the women’s competition courtesy of Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke in 2009.

Recent Results

Great Britain head into the 2026 Olympic Winter Games looking to build upon their position as the country’s most successful winter team sport.

The current Olympic quad has seen unprecedented success on the World Cup stage, with Overall World Cup medals won in 2-man, 4-man and Combined competitions in two of the three seasons to date.

The team, piloted by Brad Hall, have won more than 20 World Cup medals across the first three years of this Olympic cycle, securing the nation’s first World Championship 4-man medal for 84 years in 2023 and being crowned European Champions the same season.

The women’s team led by Adele Nicoll won World Cup silver in Lake Placid in 2023, while GB2 pilot Nick Gleeson won back-to-back golds on the lower North American Cup circuit at the start of this season.

 

Pace Setters in Para Bobsleigh

Para Bobsleigh is not yet a Paralympic sport but it is a hugely successful one at world level for Great Britain thanks to the efforts of one man.

Corrie Mapp is the reigning World Champion and Overall World Cup winner and has no fewer than 60 international medals to his name, including 22 gold since his GB debut in 2015.

Para Bobsleigh sees men and women compete in a single category, with the running start replaced by a catapult style system on a number of the same tracks used for other IBSF bobsleigh and skeleton events.