Royal Navy Jack Speak

I was bought up in the village of West Kingsdown, Kent and our house backed onto Brands Hatch race track where we would watch racing cars and motorbikes racing around the track at high speed which always fascinated me.  My father was a motorcycle dealer and would always bring me posters and magazines featuring racing motorcycles which made me want to do anything that involved speed and the excitement of danger!  My mother was, at the time, a nurse and so wanted me to do anything that was not dangerous.  We moved to Orpington, Kent when I was 7 but I still had a craving for speed throughout my young age and into my teens, although my parents sensibly refused to let me have a motorcycle.  I attended Warren Road Primary School along with my Sister. I then moved to Charterhouse Secondary School until I joined the Royal Navy at 16 ½ years of age.

Whilst growing up I always had to be doing something, Cubs, Scouts and then the Sea Cadet Corps at 12 where the opportunity to take part in adventurous activities kept me constantly occupied.  My Grandparents played a huge part of my life in my teens, always there to encourage me and often, secretly, help me fund my activities and the new equipment I always seemed to require!  I had also been fortunate enough to go skiing with school and had now found a way of enabling me to achieve desire for speed and firmly establishing my love of winter sports.

With the desire for adventure I joined the Royal Navy in 1983 at an early age as a Seaman Operator (Gunnery Branch) and over the years involved myself in various activities always looking for new challenges.  I became a Ships Diver and quickly volunteered to change branches and become a professional diver and successfully passed the course to become Clearance Diver.  I then started to chase another dream that involved a sport I had seen on television, to race down a bobsleigh track. But not in a bobsleigh, but headfirst on something that reassembles a tea tray called a ‘skeleton’.

The start of my career in Skeleton started by representing the Royal Navy in the Cresta Run, held at St Moritz, Switzerland on a specially built track where mistake will have you flying through the air and out of the track and injuries are simply an accepted risk. I had the opportunity to take part in Skeleton by entering the Great Britain Novice Championships held in Austria and winning first place.  This then led to further competitions and a place in the Great Britain Team that covered the next 7 years and included starting the Royal Navy Skeleton Team for both male and female athletes. I am still competing for the Royal Navy in Cresta and am manager/coach of the Royal Navy Skeleton Team.

Now the new challenge that has been offered to me is probably the hardest, but my proudest, managing and coaching the Great Britain Skeleton Team which is made up of professional athletes, and, with the help of our team of support staff and coaches, hopefully the success of Great Britain wining Olympic Medal’s in the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver, the ultimate success in any sport.  

I live in Devon with my wife and consider her support and the support of my colleagues at work one of the most important factors in my efforts to achieve success.