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Walking through the University of Bath’s vast sports complex to Britain’s only bobsleigh push-start track, a momentary silence is broken by the thwack of a ball and hearty cheers from excited adolescent spectators.
It is the first Wednesday afternoon – when inter-university sport takes centre stage – of the academic year, and Adele Nicoll is reflecting on how her own undergraduate days inadvertently led her to this point. Nicoll, then a sport and exercise science student at Cardiff University, had an eye on making it as an international shot putter, but not to the detriment of enjoying all aspects of university life; she played as hard as she worked.
Upon graduating in the summer of 2020, serendipity struck when she met up with a university friend she made while sampling the Welsh capital’s nightlife. “I didn’t actually have a friendship with this girl outside of the clubs,” she recalls. “So we decided to be wholesome, change the dynamic of the friendship and meet outside of a bar for once.”
Prompted by Covid restrictions, the pair headed to a local park and went for a run. At one point, Nicoll asked her friend to record her undertaking a series of sprints. The video, uploaded on to social media, would change the now 29-year-old’s life.
It caught the eye of a then British bobsleigh athlete, who sent Nicoll a message asking if she had ever considered giving the winter sport a go. At that point, she barely knew bobsleigh existed. Little more than five years on, she now has the Winter Olympics firmly in her sights.
“As much as you can look back on certain phases of your life and wonder if you could have done things differently, ultimately every decision you make leads you to the place you’re in,” she says, settling into the wooden cabin at the top of the track. “I went to a park in Cardiff that I’d never been in before, and I also didn’t know the girl very well either. But everything seems to come together.”
Nicoll is not the average Winter Olympic hopeful. Remember that shot put dream from her university days? Well, it never went away. She earned her third British shot put title in four seasons in the summer and next year she will almost certainly throw for Wales at her second Commonwealth Games. But her ambitions do not end there.
“At some point in my lifetime I’m very set on competing in a summer Olympics as well,” she says, before pausing and laughing. “I’m not sure where that’s going to fit in at the moment! But I intend on being there at some point.”
It comes as little surprise, then, to hear that she almost added a doctorate in clinical psychology to the mix a couple of years ago, before her mother urged her to focus on sport (albeit two of them) for the time being. “I’m terrible for wanting to do everything,” says Nicoll. “So I’m glad she reined me in.”
The addition of bobsleigh left her tasked with shedding three stones to ensure she remained under sled weight limits. At that point she was a pusher, propelling pilot Mica McNeill (the athlete who had replied to Nicoll’s fateful park sprint social-media post) down the track as quickly as she could. Despite the pair winning Britain’s first two-woman World Cup medal for 13 years, Nicoll was dealt a “really difficult” blow when only selected as a reserve for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Aware of McNeill’s then impending retirement plans, she opted to “take control” of her own destiny and embark on learning to drive the sled. Within two years, she had claimed another World Cup silver. “The traditional expected timeline is eight years to become a world-class pilot,” she says. “We’d made it within two seasons.”
Her next pilot goals lie at the first World Cup event of the season later this month, where she hopes to qualify in both the monobob and two-woman events for February’s Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the latter alongside either Kya Placide or Ashleigh Nelson. The target there is to finish in the top seven, which would represent an all-time best for a British female bobsleigh athlete. The longer-term aim is a medal at the 2030 French Alps Games.
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The predicament of how to balance those objectives with her shot put career is slightly trickier. Since finishing eighth at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, she has thrown just once a week near her Cardiff home – a time constraint that has not prevented her from winning multiple British titles. Her UK Sport funding is for bobsleigh only, meaning shot put takes a back seat.
“It’s frustrating that I don’t get to see my maximal results in athletics right now, but I’m really happy with the thought process of just keeping it ticking, learning as much as I can technically and making small improvements,” she says.
“If my funding and main responsibilities lie within bobsleigh then that’s the priority. Whatever happens in athletics between the next two Winter Olympics will have to be reviewed when it comes.”
As unlikely as the sporting bedfellows seem, she insists there is greater crossover than people might think. “The more powerful you are, the further the shot will go. That transfers very well to bobsleigh because moving a 175kg sled from zero, breaking that inertia, and getting to the highest velocity possible involves a lot of power. If you understand the principles that underpin the two events, then you can see the correlation.”
One question she cannot resolve is that of preference; while her childhood heart remains with shot put, her main adult ambition lies in bobsleigh. “If I was able to answer which one I preferred I wouldn’t do both because I would just focus on one,” she says. “I love doing them both and truly believe I have the ability to do them both at a high level.”
And what of the old partying companion, who unwittingly played such an important role in her sporting evolution? “We’re still friends and she’s actually made me an honorary auntie to her baby,” says Nicoll. All those university nights spent in Cardiff’s bars were worthwhile after all.
