Jaclyn Narracott: Everything you need to know about the Australian skeleton star

Jaclyn Narracott is on the brink of more history at the halfway stage of the women's skeleton at Beijing 2022.

No Australian slider has ever won a medal in skeleton at the Olympic Winter Games but Narracott leads a competitive field that includes Olympic and world medallists.

That follows her historic performance in St Moritz, Switzerland, in January when she became the first Australian to win a gold medal in the skeleton World Cup.

Narracott is competing at her second Winter Olympics following her debut at PyeongChang 2018 where she finished 16th.

Two clean, fast runs gave the 31-year-old a combined time of 2 minutes 4.34 seconds for a lead of just over two-tenths of a second over German pair Hannah Neise and world champion Tina Hermann.

Narracott told Olympics.com: “This field is ridiculously competitive, so to be sitting on top of it is phenomenal.

“It was always going to be a good race and I knew that if I could put down two runs where I was calm and composed, I was going to be in the mix. But that still doesn't make it any less exciting to be sitting number one."

Family

Narracott's uncle Paul Narracott was the first Australian to compete at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.

He competed in the 100m and 200m on the track at Los Angeles 1984 before switching to the bobsleigh at Albertville 1992.

Uncle Paul's stories lit the flame of her Olympic dream and she was further inspired when she watched Sydney 2000 when she was nine.

"Having Uncle Paul as a role model and influence was massive in opening my eyes to what could be possible," she told abc.net.au

Narracott's Olympic debut came 34 years after her uncle made his own Games bow.

From athletics to the skeleton track

Narracott's dream when she was a child was to be Olympic champion.

Like her uncle, Narracott was originally a track and field athlete, competing in the 100m, 200m, long jump and triple jump.

Her ambition was to compete in the athletics at the Summer Games but that changed when she joined up with the Australia bobsleigh squad in Europe in 2011.

She met the national skeleton coaches who convinced her to switch to skeleton which she did a year later in March 2012, making her World Cup debut at the end of 2014.

Being coached by husband and 2018 bronze medallist

Narracott trains at the University of Bath, England, where she is coached by husband Dom Parsons.

Like Narracott, Parsons was a track athlete and competed in the 400m before switching to skeleton and going on to represent Great Britain at Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018, where he won bronze.

He retired in late 2019 and Narracott told slidingonice.com: "Coaching-wise it's really nice that he's not an athlete anymore because it means I can pick his brain and there's no conflict of interest and he can be a bit more open, which has definitely helped me some."

Training in PyeongChang

With the season disrupted by Covid-19, Narracott spent the bulk of it training in PyeongChang which she describes as "the best decision I could have made!"

It enabled her to focus solely on sliding without the distraction of competition while also spending time with fellow Australian Ashleigh Werner, who missed out on bobsleigh selection to Beijing.

Narracott told slidingonice.com: "I got to spend that time with Ash Werner’s team of bobsledders, and we got in the ice house and everything and the Koreans were just great.

"At least until it got to -30C (-22F) and they had to cancel training! And then it snowed, so at one point we got completely snowed in!

"We walked to the track because everything else was snowed in, got to the track and then had to hike from the bottom of the hill to the very top of the track to where the gym is so we could do something."