Southend Doctor competing in the Winter Olympics: "It's a dream come true"
She'll be competing in the Luge
Last updated 1st Feb 2022
A Doctor at Southend University Hospital will be competing in this year's Winter Olympics, held in Beijing, China.
Elsa Desmond lives in Westcliff, but is originally from Ireland.
She'll be representing Ireland in the Luge, and is the first person ever to qualify to do so at the Olympics:
"It's a dream come true, it really is. It's just the most amazing feeling - I keep having to pinch myself and think that I'm going to wake up soon."
Elsa will attend the opening ceremony, which she's really looking forward to:
"I'm incredibly excited and I will be very surprised if I don't cry. It's going to be different to previous Olympics because it won't be the full stadium. It's an 80,000 seater stadium, but the spectators will be very limited because of COVID.
"There's still going to be lots of support staff there and there will be select spectators, so it's still going to be the most amazing experience, just to be walking out under the flag and knowing that my family and all these people are watching at home on TV, it's just going to be amazing."
She's trying not to let nerves get in the way of competing:
"I don't think it's hit me yet that this race is the Olympics, because I raced here in November and I've done so many races over the last few years. I'm just thinking about it the same way as I think about every other race - if I try to think about it differently, it'll make me more nervous."
"I don't want to change anything I've done... the hard work has been done to get me here, so now I just need to do what I know I can do and relax and enjoy every run on that track, because this is the end of season and I won't slide again until October."
The Luge sees Elsa laying on her back, feet-first on a small sled, using her legs and shoulders to steer herself down an icy track. There are no such tracks in Essex, or even the UK, so she has to get creative with her training:
"We do lots of time in the gym and lots of power work, upper body work for the starts, general core for steering mobility and lots of mobility work. I actually spend a lot of time at Southend Leisure Centre on the athletics track - I have a sled with wheels and I can practice the paddling elements of my starts on the track by putting spikes on my fingers which give me similar grip as on the ice.
"Then swimming and running as cardio is obviously essential for sliding. It's just a combination of those things while I'm working, and fitting it around hours at the hospital."
It took Elsa a lot of tries to be able to learn to Luge:
"I saw it in the Olympics in 2006 when I was a kid and thought it looked like a lot of fun and I decided that I wanted to try it. But we contacted people and everyone said I was too young or I was the wrong country or various other things.
"We kept trying and eventually, when I was a teenager, I managed to go to a British Army ice sports camp as a civilian, and I got on sled and loved it right from the beginning."
The 2026 Winter Olympics, held in Italy, are now in the Doctor's sights:
"2026 was the aim. I've only been international for four years as a senior, which isn't huge amount of time in this sport, so we were aiming for 2026. With 2022 we wanted to get experience with the qualifying process and to take lessons from this and look forward into 2026... so the fact that I've qualified for 22 was a shock to everyone, including myself!"