Christian Bromley could consider returning to the British skeleton

Christian Bromley has refused to rule out a return to the British fold as the team calculate the cost of a disastrous run of appearances at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The four British skaters finished well despite the £6.5m funding round after the sport’s historic three-medal run in Pyeongchang in 2018.

By contrast, Bromley, a former world champion and four-time Olympian, is the performance director of the Dutch team that won Kimberly Boss a bronze medal on a small chunk of the UK budget.

Bromley, who retired from competition in 2015 and has not been directly involved with the UK program for over a decade, runs Bromley Technologies with his brother Richard, who supplied the sled to the Australian silver medalist Jackie Narracott.

Bromley told the Palestinian News Agency: “My door was always open and it was always open. The UK program wanted to go in a different direction and I respected that.

“I went my own way and wanted to work with international athletes and expand my experience base beyond the UK programme.

“I’ve done it now, I’ve done it in six years, but for the next step, who knows. All sports, successful or not, go through a cycle and of course the UK curriculum has some questions.

Bromley built the skates on which Alex Comber and his partner Shelley Rodman won medals at the 2002 and 2006 Olympics respectively. Richard Bromley was the performance director for the South Korean team that won the gold by Seunghyun Bin in 2018 in Pyeongchang.

Bromley described Britain’s performance in Beijing, where Matt Weston topped the list with 15th place in the men’s event, as a “step backwards”, amid speculation elsewhere that equipment was recently introduced to give skaters an advantage.

“From the outside, it’s clear something was wrong, and it probably carried over to last season,” Bromley added.

“The big question we all had was what they would bring in terms of innovation, would it be a positional shift for them to compete for medals? That was the question we all asked ourselves and they didn’t seem to have that innovation in the bank.

“If you look at their results you could tell it was a step backwards and I have no explanation for that. You have to have some confidence already to compete for medals, and maybe their strategy was just to go completely under the radar and it didn’t work.”

“Just spending money and building great teams won’t get you medals. You have to focus on the right athletes and the right techniques, and keep your finger on what makes the performance real. Maybe they lost that wrist somewhere along the way.