Alex’s Skeleton

We are absolutely delighted to have heard from Alex who updated us on his latest trip to Calgary in Canada, and to share some of the photos he sent us.

Alex Horsfall was severely injured by an IED explosion on 10 July, 2009, while on patrol in Sangin town, Afghanistan, with the Afghan National Army. Five of Alex’s fellow Riflemem were killed in the blasts of that day, and a further four were injured.

Since returning to the UK and undergoing intensive rehabilitation, Alex found a passion for bobsleighing, and he spoke to us to talk about his latest bobsleighing trip:

“I’ve just come back from Calgary, where we spent ten days, partly training and partly competing.

Bobsleighing is something we’ve been doing now for about a year and a half with the support of Help for Heroes.

Skeleton bobsleigh is basically like lying on a tea tray on skates, and racing down an icy slope to get to the bottom as fast as you can. The times of the competitors are recorded and the fastest is the winner.

Just Rifles came on board to help me when I started looking to get some spiked shoes for the sport. These shoes allow you to run at the start, to get yourself down the slope. You have to buy them in Germany because not everyone needs them – and Just Rifles helped me with that and funded the shoes.

Our ultimate goal is to get to the Paralympics in 2018. We wanted to get there for 2014 but unfortunately aspects of the preparation weren’t ready, so we decided to aim for South Korea in 2018 instead.

In Calgary we had 5/6 days of training and the remaining were competition. It was a multi-national trip, for example we had competitors from the USA, Canada, Latvia, and Switzerland.

There are more and more people competing in this sport, and that’s great as it is enormously enjoyable. It will bring more funding, and also compel others to take it more seriously as a competitive sport.

I was happy to come in third in the first run of the competition, but unfortunately I bashed my arm up a bit during that run and could not compete the second time.

Skeleton bobsleigh goes all the way back to tobogganing, possibly around the start of the 20th century. I know that because my great grandparents were doing it at St Moritz, on the Cresta Run. But it’s only been an Olympic sport for around 15 or 20 years.

We are immensely happy for Lizzy Arnold who won Gold in the sport at Sochi this year. We hope to attract more attention, funding, and public support for Skeleton Bobsleigh, and I’m very grateful to Just Rifles for their help and support.”