Kiwi RAF weapons technician Rhys Thornbury hopes to be flying in Korea. Photo / Getty Images
Kiwi RAF weapons technician Rhys Thornbury hopes to be flying in Korea. Photo / Getty Images
Among New Zealand's 21 athletes preparing for the Winter Olympics in South Korea, none have a back story to compare with Rhys Thornbury.
You won't have heard of him unless you are a student of the skeleton, not the bony variety but the Olympic sport which combines strength, skill, nerve and boldness as racers fly down a course head-first on a sled. The luge is similar, except the athletes lie on their back and go feet-first.
Thornbury has heard it all before; mad, crazy, why not take up something less, er, lunatic. He begs to differ on the safety aspect, loves what he's doing and has arrived in South Korea figuring he has a chance to figure among the contenders.
How he got there is a story probably unique among New Zealand Olympians.
When the 28-year-old arrived in Korea to join the rest of New Zealand's team there will have been handshakes of introduction all round. Although most, if not all, have a strong New Zealand-based setup, Thornbury lives in England, works as a weapons technician for the Royal Air Force and has been training full time, on full pay, for three years, courtesy of the RAF.
And if you think there's a typo in there, you would be wrong.
The back story starts in Australia, where he was born. His parents moved to New Zealand when he was one, and he lived in Wellington and Queenstown before they shifted to England. His father, Mike, holds dual New Zealand and British passports, as does Thornbury. Mother, Rosalind, is a New Zealander.
At 18, Thornbury was casting about for a future without settling on a plan.
"I was stuck in a limbo, doing my A levels - essentially university entrance - thinking what to do and wasn't really finding anything that really interested me," Thornbury said.
He saw a job advertised and off he went. After nine weeks basic training with the RAF, Thornbury did 15 months weapons technical training.
He's based at RAF Brize Norton, the RAF's largest base, about 90km north west of London and the main transport base for Britain's military. His job covers a range of aspects related to explosives.
Jobs include fitting ejection seats in aircraft, which are fired by explosive cartridges, repairing, constructing and servicing equipment such as cannons to fit in fighter jets. It is ground-based technical work, but even so there's a hint of Boy's Own Adventures about it.
Thornbury admits there was a touch of that in his decision to get into the work.
"It seemed right up my street."
In 2011, Thornbury first stepped onto a skeleton. He did a beginner's week with the air force in Austria and was hooked.
"I got on the ice and I was pretty terrible but on the final two days it clicked a bit."
He gradually worked his way up to World Cup level and having raced for New Zealand applied for, and got, a place on the RAF's elite athlete programme.
Thornbury also received a performance enhancement grant from the New Zealand Olympic Committee after making the top 12 at last year's world championships and an NZOC scholarship. It sounds just the ticket, but reality is looming for Thornbury, who is due to return to his day job from April 1.
He reached World Cup level in 2015. There has been decent progress, to the point where he finished 14th overall on the just-completed World Cup circuit. There have been five top 10 places in the past two seasons but Thornbury said it had been an up and down period.
Thornbury is confident he can mix it with the best in the skeleton at the Winter Olympics. Photo / Getty Images
"I'm never one to put blame on anything else other than my own ability. I've had really good races and good pace, and also tough ones where I've had to think about going back to the drawing board."
Thornbury staunchly defends the sport on the score of safety.
"People always say you're crazy but the thing with skeleton is because it's quite a difficult sport it is really highly controlled. You don't just throw yourself on to the hardest track in the world if you're not ready for it, and you do gradually get better and better."
He acknowledged there have been horror stories - most notably with a Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, British Columbia, on the day of the opening ceremony.
"That was a freak accident. I've never been at a track where someone has even broken a bone.
"I've never had more than bruises on my arms. It gets a dangerous reputation because of the speed and alien aspect of the sport. I've had worse injuries playing rugby and, especially in Winter Games, I think they're a lot crazier. Downhill skiing, for example, and the amount and repetition of injures those guys get."
It's a fair argument, but you still need a healthy dollop of ice in the veins to throw yourself on to a sled and push the envelope in the search for extra thousandths of seconds which determine races.
Halfway down a run - Olympic placings will be decided on the aggregate time of four runs over two days - Thornbury says you have a sense of how you're tracking.
"We aim to do all the work in the corners. When you're going down straight you want to be doing nothing.
"You want to build up as much speed as possible when you come off a corner. I'll know halfway down if I'm on to a good run. You can feel extra speed or a little more pressure. "But it's crazy. When someone is one-tenth of a second ahead of me, that's a lot of time. Entire races can be covered in under one second. Make one mistake and you can go from top 10 to nowhere, and that's the excitement of it all."
It is a European-dominated sport, with some American influence. However, the favourite going into the Olympics is, perhaps fittingly, a Korean, Yun Sung-bin, a 23-year-old who competed at the Sochi Olympics four years ago. He won five of the eight World Cup legs this season and was second in two. Thornbury cited his formidable push, which racers employ to start their run, as a key factor in the Korean's success.
Thornbury said the Pyeongchang circuit is not especially fast. Speed suits him as he's one of the bigger men in the field. More size helps get the pace up, but he also believes the track has enough technical elements to help him, as he rates himself as a competitive driver.
His coach is Austrian former world champion and 2002 Olympic silver medallist Martin Rettl . His knowledge and expertise has significantly helped Thornbury.
New Zealand's best skeleton result was the 10th of three-time Olympian Ben Sandford at Turin 12 years ago.
Now, with all the advantages at his disposal over the last three years, it's up to Thornbury.
And here's a thought: if he fancies another Olympics tilt on the RAF, this is his chance. The day job might then have to wait.
Skeleton Kiwis
• Rhys Thornbury will be sixth New Zealander to compete in the skeleton at the Winter Olympics. • Three-time Olympian Ben Sandford's 10th at Turin in 2006 is New Zealand's best result. • The other five were Liz Couch (11th in 2002), Louise Corcoran (12th in 2006), Tionette Stoddard (14th in 2010), Iain Roberts (withdrew before third run in 2010) and Katharine Eustace (11th in 2014). • Sandford's father, Bruce, won skeleton gold at the 1992 world championships in Calgary.
