How diving helps Spain’s skeleton and bobsled team

Peaceful gliding to cacophonous gliding

Equating sliding down an icy track at speed with the cacophonous rattle of a sled vibrating through your entire being, with the peacefulness of gliding through dense water, accompanied only by the sound of your own breath, seems quite the opposite, Mirambell agreed.

“It almost feels like you’re in space,” he said of the underwater world. “Unlike us who are on a sled at 90 miles per hour.”

But there is a method here.

“We are here for a training camp focused on the mental side of skeleton and bobsleigh,” said the man who is now also vice-president of the sport’s world governing body, the IBSF.

“Making decisions, using other senses when you can’t see it, dealing with stress, taking on new challenges, stepping out of your comfort zone… These are all things we’ve been working on as a team and are now putting into practice.”

Those underwater exercises included removing the mask and, with vision reduced, searching for a stick that had been placed on the seabed.

“There was a moment of chaos without the goggles,” Rodríguez said with a smile, “but my competitive side came out and I went straight for the goal. Really cool exercise.”

Spain’s first female bobsled athlete, García, had a slightly steeper learning curve with this particular exercise.

“My eyesight was so bad. I couldn’t do it. I swam to the top. I hated it, and then I gave up,” she said.

When pressed on what she thought was the most important point of the exercise, the Canadian-born monobob specialist said, “I think I’m still staying calm because I just decided to come up to the surface, but my eyes were really hurting. So that was my solution.”

So, is that in any way similar to doing a skeleton run?

“Yes,” said García, who switched allegiances in 2024 and went on to become the first woman to represent Spain at the World Championships in Lake Placid in March. “Like staying focused and calm and not letting myself panic.”

Happy with the results of the exercise, which he hopes will help the Spanish athletes gain enough points at this season’s World Cup races that will determine the 2026 Olympic qualification for Milano Cortina, Mirambell concluded: “I think it’s just a good reminder that staying calm and having fun is the best way to get out of stressful situations successfully.”