Looks 'mental' from the sidelines but skill the key to this skeleton rider's Olympic dream

SLIDING head first down an icy track at 140km/h with no brakes might just be John Farrow's ticket to Olympic gold.

John Farrow

SLIDING head first down an icy track at 140km/h with no brakes might sound like a disaster for most, but it could be John Farrow's ticket to Olympic gold.

The Turramurra resident is Australia's top-ranked skeleton rider and has recently returned from testing out the track at Sochi in Russia, where next year's Winter Olympics will be held. He narrowly missed out on selection for the 2010 Vancouver Games not long after he first tried the sport.

"Making the team isn't all I want to do now, I want to compete for the next few years," he said.

"I definitely want to be at Sochi and in Korea (in 2018) and go for medals. I definitely think I can do it."

With no suitable tracks in the southern hemisphere, the 31-year-old spends half his year abroad training and the other half combining a full-time job as a bicycle mechanic with sprint and conditioning training at Homebush.

He is partly-funded by both the Australian and NSW Institutes of Sport but is keen to attract sponsorship to enable him to push even harder for gold.

His task was made tougher after he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament and hamstring in New York last year.

Despite this, Farrrow said skeleton riders were generally quite safe and impact injuries were very rare.

"It gets better as you learn it, and now, going at 130km/h feels quite normal to me," he said.

"But when you first look at it from the side of the track it looks mental and you don't quite understand how you can control it."