Meet trailblazer Montell Douglas- first British woman to compete in both winter and summer Olympics
Douglas only joined British Bobsleigh in 2016
Lewisham raised Montell Douglas is representing Team GB in the two-woman bobsleigh.
She is the first British woman to compete in both the winter and summer Olympics.
Following an impressive career as a sprinter, she only joined British Bobsleigh in the summer of 2016.
We spoke to Joshua Nevers-Simpson an Elite and Development Sports Performance coach, who trained her, they met in the Lee Valley Athletics centre gym in 2011. He explained that from the moment he met her in the gym she was a “tough one.”
He praised her work ethic as being “second to none”, describing her as “meticulous” and added that “when she comes to training, she definitely means business.”
2008 competition
Douglas, who competed for Team GB at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in athletics, will team up with Mica McNeill in the women’s bobsleigh.
She represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing in both the 100m and the 4x100m relay, reaching the final in the latter.
She set her personal best of 11.05 seconds over the 100m in 2008, and therefore broke a national record that had stood for over 25 years.
Bobsleigh
Her coach Nevers- Simpson stated “It’s been 14 years, since she last competed, it takes a lot to keep going, especially 14 years on from the last time you competed at the highest level in sport, and that’s a testament to herself”
She made what appeared to be a strange move when she swapped track for ice.
But her coach Nevers-Simpson pointed out, she is someone who likes to embrace change, she is willing to go through a process that’ll better herself” he goes on to say “if you’re too comfortable, you’re going to become stagnant” by embracing change you can “open up other doors.”
Her first bobsleigh race for GB came in mid-January 2017, just a few days after first taking to the ice.
The British bobsleigh scouts recruited her to their team and gave her a chance to make history.
Douglas acknowledges that she is not just a woman, but a black woman, doing something that many people who look like her may have thought was not accessible to them.