Winter Olympics: Tea-tray riding on ice will heat up British winter

Do you hear that rumbling sound? An avalanche is on its way – and in just under 10 weeks' time the snow and ice of the XIX Winter Olympics will come to our households through 90 hours of BBC coverage.

For most of us, what takes place in Salt Lake City in February is likely to provide an agreeable diversion from football, rugby and cricket. And who knows, there may be the odd chance to wave a Union Jack.

For those Britons taking part, these Games are a precious and fleeting opportunity to assert their existence in the vast maul of worldwide sporting activity. When it comes to engaging the attentions of the great British public, being a winter Olympian is like being a tennis player, only four times worse. At least Wimbledon comes once a year.

This week, in and around the ice rink at Alexandra Palace, the Beeb and the British Olympic Association hosted a get-together of press and participants intended to expand the knowledge of the former and coverage of the latter.

Sadly for the would-be Olympians concerned, the occasional nature of their exposure means they have to put up with questions which, if couched in footballing terms, would amount to something like this:

"So David, when you kick the ball towards goal, do you want it to go over or under the bar?"

"So Roy, if you hit another player, that's not allowed, is it?"

"So it's fair to say, then, that the idea is to score more goals than the other side?"

A BOA spokesman confided that the track-suited competitors gathered on the rainswept hill above Wood Green had been warned to expect queries with a familiar ring to them. In the event, no one bore up better – and I think that is the appropriate phrase – than Alex Coomber, a 27-year-old RAF Intelligence Officer, who has put herself in the dubious position of being Britain's one genuine contender for a gold medal by winning the last two World Cup competitions in the skeleton.

The skeleton. You know. Like the luge, only head-first.

What do you mean you're not sure what the luge is? Like the skeleton. Only feet first.

For the benefit of those present in the Ally Pally, Coomber, an Oxford graduate who is at least as cool as ice, elucidated. The skeleton, she said, is a sled resembling a tea-tray, without any of the protection bobsleighs afford, and the idea is to run with it and then jump on it and then stay on it all the way down a winding ice run. Speeds of up to 75mph are reached. Two runs. Fastest combined wins. And it's not all that dangerous, even though the event was dropped from the Olympics in 1948 on account of being considered so.

Whether Coomber will succeed in earning a medal in Salt Lake is impossible to forecast. But if medals were awarded for lucidity, hers would be a gold. Even as she patiently explained her event, however, the fundamental challenge of the winter Olympics re-emerged: nothing there is simple.

Even sliding down ice on a tea tray turns out to be something fraught with technological factors and fractional calculations relating to shifting a shoulder here or dipping a toe there. And yet for those present, the event will consist of regular blurs and constant surveillance of the nearest digital clock.

In the summer Olympics, we can all see who crosses the line ahead of whom, or who jumps the furthest. It gets trickier on cold stuff. One thing must be remembered, though. The great British public is always willing to put itself out for special cases.

Before the midweek event got fully under way, someone somewhere decided to play "Let's Face The Music and Dance" over the PA, presumably in tribute to the pairing whose theme that song became at the last but one winter Games: Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

In the course of winning the figure skating gold at the 1984 Olympics, and returning for a bronze 10 years later, this divine pairing succeeded in turning Britain into a nation of scorekeepers.

A total of 24 million television viewers in this country watched the ultimate frustration of their quest for a second gold in Lillehammer. And most of those viewers, it seemed, had trenchant opinions on the validity of the original dance segment, or the question of whether the British pair had suffered because of a shift in international judging trends rather than any inherent failing in their own performance.

We were all experts. Or if we weren't, we all knew someone who was and kept them close at hand. And if the RAF officer can take flight in Salt Lake City we'll all be up to speed skeleton-wise. Make no bones about it.