Winter Olympics: Crawley bobsleigh pilot gunning for medal in Beijing

Hall begins his Beijing campaign alongside Nick Gleeson in the two-man event, a discipline in which Britain have won three World Cup medals this season.

Germany plough millions of pounds into research every year and are an immovable object at the top of the sport’s medal table - but not for long if Hall has anything to do with it.

“They’re nervous at the moment,” said Hall of the Germans, who won three of four gold medals available in the sport at Pyeongchang 2018.

“On some tracks, like in Sigulda which is quite new on the circuit, they’re nervous of us on tracks they don’t know well.

“You see a lot of yellow jackets from the German sleds, always watching us and what we’re doing. They’re interested in what we’re doing and see us as a threat.”

In some Winter Olympic sports, like alpine skiing, athletes wrestle with an invisible enemy and a rotating cast of rivals. For Hall and Gleeson, gold standard is plain to see.

German pilot Francesco Friedrich is as dominant an athlete as you’ll find in Beijing. He went unbeaten throughout 2021, won 21 World Cup races on the bounce until January and claimed the last four overall four-man titles.

“No-one’s unbeatable, we’ve proven that,” said Gleeson.

“Everyone is human and no-one is a robot. He’s on another level at the moment but he’s never out of our sights."

Hall added: “To be that successful for that long, you’ve got to have a bit of talent. He’s definitely a good pilot.

“I wouldn’t say he’s the best in the world, there are probably a couple of others who are more consistent and better at driving. But he seems to have the best recipe.”

Hall’s main target is the four-man event where he will compete alongside Gleeson, Greg Cackett and Taylor Lawrence.

But the two-man is another genuine medal opportunity and he finished second fastest in the fifth of six training runs in Yanqing, 0.08 seconds faster than Friedrich.

“It’s hard for us to compete but we can still compete against them, especially on tracks they don’t know very well,” said Hall.

“As soon as we get to a track like Beijing that no-one knows, we hope they’ll make driving errors and we can catch up on them. We can definitely do that.”

Watch all the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 live on discovery+, Eurosport and Eurosport app.

Tom Harle, Sportsbeat