Olympic skeleton bronze medallist Deas retires

Laura Deas, a former skeleton bronze medallist at the Winter Olympics, has announced her retirement.

The 36-year-old Wrexham-born competitor’s career highlight was at the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea, where she placed third, tying her with gold medalist and close friend Lizzy Yarnold.

A British duo’s podium at a Winter Games was the first to be displayed on the same podium.

Deas missed the 2023-24 season due to her pregnancy, finishing 19th at her next Olympics, the 2022 Beijing Games.

Deas re-entered the sport after giving birth to her daughter, but she has since decided to stop competing after the 2022-23 campaign has ended.

Her final race was a World Cup final in February 2023, where she won a silver medal, which she describes as “a lovely sign off.”

Deas told BBC Radio Wiltshire, “I wanted to at least play one more season immediately after the Beijing Olympics because the Beijing Games hadn’t gone so well,” and he didn’t want to leave on that note.

“So I was immediately aware that I had at least one more season in me.”

However, it seemed to me to be a rather hypothetical situation. I didn’t really have a clear end point in mind, which I believe was partly due to the fact that I didn’t want to race in the first place because I knew it would be my last experience on ice.

“Because the problem with our sport is really that it’s impossible to just play it recreationally,” she said.

She has fond memories of Sigulda, Latvia, where she placed second in her final race of the World Cup.

Deas said, “I did win a medal, which was a lovely end to my career.”

What a nice way to do it if this is my last time crossing the ice, I thought.

That’s the thing, after all, isn’t it? Many athletes choose to move on and do other things because of other factors. Sometimes it’s just performance, sometimes it’s just injury.

“It was a really nice race as well, because my family and friends were there as well, and the atmosphere was lovely.

After the Olympic disappointment, it was the end of a season that had actually been very healing for everyone, to be able to return to the World Cup tour and experience some success, and to kind of show everyone what we could do again.