Gurney pitches in for Winter Games hopeful

Renowned multisports athlete Steve Gurney has come to the rescue of top New Zealand skeleton sled slider Louise Corcoran's bid to make the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

Corcoran said on her website that the Coast to Coast legend had used "a huge dose of old-fashioned Kiwi ingenuity" to streamline her sled.

She and fellow skeleton racer Kelly Moffat met Gurney when he was a guest speaker at the New Zealand Olympic Committee's forum for Turin hopefuls in Wanaka in May.

Gurney was surprised at how much duct tape they had on their sleds.

"Steve thought he could make the padding I have on my sled more aerodynamic," Corcoran said.

He took her sled away after the forum and it duly came back a fortnight ago "looking fantastic and fast", Corcoran said.

Gurney had also arranged for a friend, Milton Bloomfield, to fix cracks in the fibreglass and provide a shiny black paint job.

Bloomfield was the designer of the bike with which cyclist Sarah Ulmer won Olympic gold at Athens last year.

The Wanaka-based athlete heads to the northern hemisphere in about two months to continue her Winter Olympic qualifying campaign.

Part of New Zealand's "long list" for Turin, Corcoran is back home from training at Canada Olympic Park's ice house, a year-round indoor push training facility.

- NZPA