Lamin
Deen

Place of birthLondon

Age40
Height6'
Weight102kg

Lamin Deen is a double Olympian and a World Cup gold medal winner who competed at both the 2014 Games in Sochi and the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang.

Having switched from brakeman to driver after missing out on selection for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Lamin made his Olympic bow in Russia four years later, finishing 19th in his favoured 4-man event and 23rd in the 2-man competition.

He went on to place 18th in the 4-man race alongside Ben Simons, Toby Olubi and Andrew Matthews at his second Games in South Korea and has now raced close to 250 times for his country.

Lamin won his historic World Cup gold medal with the same crew in Whistler in November 2017 in a race in which he also made headlines by hitting the then-highest speed ever recorded by a bobsleigh as he reached 97mph.

He competed at his eighth World Championships in Altenberg in 2021 and had exactly 100 World Cup starts to his name by the end of the 2021/22 sliding season.

Lamin's bobsleigh career began when he was spotted competing in the 200m sprint finals at an Army inter-unit competition in Aldershot in 2007, although he initially only started the sport as a hobby. A sergeant in the Grenadier Guards, Lamin has represented the Army in boxing and basketball, as well as athletics and bobsleigh, and was on duty at the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002.

He won two of his first three races on the North America’s Cup circuit in 2013/14, triumphing in Park City and Calgary, and went on to guide GB1 to fifth place at the 2015 World Championships in Winterberg alongside Simons, Matthews and Bruce Tasker.

He narrowly missed out on World Cup bronze with a fourth-place finish in Lake Placid in January 2016 and he and his crew of Tasker, Simons and Joel Fearon were on course for a World Championship medal before a late crash in Igls the following month. 

LAMIN IN HIS OWN WORDS...

  • Nickname: Deano
  • Most likely to be spotted: on the PS3 beating Andrew Mathews on FIFA
  • Least likely to be found: in a Diamond League 10,000m race
  • Me in three: never say die
  • Hero: my mother, as she made me the man that I am today and raised five kids alone
  • Random fact: I was a table tennis god as a child and I also guard the queen
  • If I wasn’t a slider: I would now be a Sergeant Major in the Queen’s Guards
  • Career highlights: qualifying for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi
  • Favourite track La Plagne
  • Favourite food Curry - the hotter the better
  • Favourite film The Last Samurai, Commando, Predator
  • Favourite music Hip hop, jazz, Motown

Meet the team