At the Winter Olympics this month, a Lewisham native will be making history for team GB. 14 years ago she was in Beijing for the 2008 summer Olympics; this month, in a poetic coincidence back in Beijing, Montell Douglas is competing again for team GB!
On the 4th of February, Montell Douglas walked out as part of Team GB. It wasn’t the first time she had been at Beijing’s iconic Bird’s Nest stadium, as she competed there as a 100m sprinter and as part of the 4x 100m relay team! However, for these games, she won’t be competing in the Nest, she will be competing at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre in the 2-women Bobsleigh!
No other British woman has been selected to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics in different disciplines! She will also become the first person to compete at Summer and Winter Olympics in the same city, as Beijing is the first city to host the Summer and Winter Olympics - making Montell Douglas’ achievement even more unique!
At her peak she was GB’s best female sprinter! In 2008 she got through the first heat of the women’s 100m, bowing out in the second round and she even held the British Record for the 100m sprint after running a time of 11.05 seconds! It was the first time in more than 25 years that the record had been broken when she achieved the feat in 2008! The record is now held by another South Londoner: Dina Asher-Smith, from Orpington.
In 2016 she switched disciplines to women’s bobsleigh. It may seem a strange switch, but both speed and power are important aspects of the bobsleigh. Her athletics training has been a great platform for her to get to the highest level of bobsleigh competition! In no time at all she was going to PyeongChang, in South Korea, for the 2018 Winter Olympics as a reserve for team GB’s 2-women bobsleigh team.
Between PyeongChang and Beijing, she has competed at numerous tournaments. This includes the World Cup where they placed fourth, her highest finish, on two occasions - once in 2019 and another in 2020. More recently towards the end of 2021, Douglas and her teammate Mica McNeill have been hitting excellent form, including two personal best starts!
Keep your eyes peeled for the 2-women bobsleigh. She will be taking to the ice from the 15th to the 17th of February for the practice heats, with racing starting on Friday the 18th of February! Heat 1 is on at midday (all times using GMT), shortly followed by Heat 2 at 1.30pm. At midday on Saturday the 19th Heat 3 will start, with the final heat beginning at 1.30pm on the same day.
You have two days to catch Lewisham’s Winter Olympics hero competing! So let’s all get behind Montell and follow her Winter Olympic journey!
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