After missing out on an athletics spot for Team GB at London 2012, Freshfields paralegal Lucy Onyeforo (pictured) made the switch to the bobsleigh. Now having bagged a bronze medal at a recent event, she tells of her ultimate aim: glory at next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi

A paralegal by trade, I am standing at the top of a mountain in Sochi on the Russian Black Sea coast, 846m above sea level. I'm about to push a 190kg bobsleigh as fast as I can for 35m before jumping in. 

The sleigh will reach speeds of up to 90 miles per hour while travelling along a 1,500m course, which includes 17 nerve-wracking bends. And I won't be in control of it – someone else is driving. 

I don't like rollercoasters and I'm not an adrenaline junkie. At 29, the first time I got in a bobsleigh was at the start of the year. Now I'm about to tackle the most challenging course ever designed. The question strikes me: why am I doing this?

Just five weeks before Team GB's London 2012 qualifying trials for the 100m sprint, I pulled my hamstring. I had been training for that race for four years – sometimes for six days a week and four hours a day. 

Knowing that I wouldn't have time to recover from my injury before the trials and make it to the Olympics was disappointing. Actually, I was devastated. 

I had just returned to the UK from an intensive training programme in Arizona with my coach, former Olympic champion Linford Christie. He handpicked me from many other Olympic hopefuls two years earlier while I was training at Lea Valley Athletics Centre in east London. 

My training in the US had gone to plan. I was at my peak physically and my hopes for achieving a qualifying time at the Olympic trials were high. But it just wasn't meant to be. I made it to the trials, but my injury slowed me down. In fact, I ran my slowest time of the season, just when it mattered most.

Going for gold 

My journey to that moment had started four years previously when I sprinted my way to the semi-finals in the Team GB trials for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Little more than an amateur at the time, I made the life-changing decision to give my dream of competing on home turf a chance. 

So, for the next four years, I combined a gruelling training regime with working full time as a paralegal in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's dispute resolution practice. Along the way, I was seconded to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games as a records manager to witness the Games preparations first-hand.

Freshfields allowed me to have flexible working hours of 3pm to 9pm so I could train with Linford every weekday from 10am to 1pm. My secondment gave me even more motivation to get to the Olympics. 

The firm also gave me two months off to train in Arizona in the final lead-up to the Games. I couldn't have got as far as I did without their support and their sponsorship, which helped fund my travelling, training equipment and accommodation in the past few months.

But when my dreams came to an abrupt end, I put my intense training routine as a professional athlete on hold and returned to life as a paralegal. It was a pretty sudden change, going from training six days a week down to the odd training session every fortnight. 

But I felt really drained from the whole experience. I'm an athlete, though, and you don't change overnight. Before long, I was thinking 'What should I do next?'

Changing direction

A chance Facebook message provided the answer. In 2008, then-bobsleigh world champion Nicola Minichiello contacted me via the social networking site after seeing me compete in the Beijing trials. 

Nicola spotted potential and wanted me to be her 'brakewoman' – bobsleigh-speak for the person who pushes the sleigh. But I had my sights firmly set on sprinting and didn't give bobsleigh much more thought for the next four years.

At the time, I said I would get back in touch with Nicola after the Olympics, but to be honest I had totally forgotten about it. However, a conversation with one of my training partners brought it back to mind and he encouraged me to give it a go. So I followed it up and before long, I was invited down to Bath University to try out for the GB bobsleigh team.

Gary Anderson, GB bobsleigh performance director, gave me the nod after I completed a series of physically demanding tests, one involving rolling training equipment with a 45kg weight attached. I completed that test faster than any other member of the current women's team.

From the track to the ice

To an amateur, the route from the sprinting track to the bobsleigh track does not seem obvious. But to be good at bobsleigh – and particularly to be a good brakewoman – you need three things: power, strength and speed. 

These are the qualities that made me a good sprinter. However, not all sprinters are going to be able to transfer their skills to the ice. But there are certainly many elements of sprinting that are transferable.

Fast forward a few months and I am now in training with the GB women's bobsleigh team – ranked fourth in the world – having gone to the Sochi World Cup and the World Bobsleigh & Skeleton Championships in St Moritz, Switzerland in February. 

And I have just competed for the first time at the North America Cup final in Lake Placid, where I won my first medal – bronze. Bobsleigh is a dangerous discipline. But I'm on the fast track to the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year.

My training schedule is markedly different from my days on the race track. You'll do about two slides a day in training, so you're up on the slopes for about two-and-a-half to three hours. And unlike the disciplined training I experienced with Linford, you are expected to manage your own schedule and fit in weights training around bobsleigh practice.

Not for the faint hearted

Bobsleigh is often described as the Formula One of winter sports. Bobsledders are their own pit crews – you have to transport the sled everywhere (from the bottom of the track to the top, all over Europe, and in and out of trucks) and it weighs anywhere from 170kg to 250kg. 

And then there is the rest of the equipment (such as bags, helmets, runners, tools) and polishing runners. All in all, it's physically very demanding.

While no sport is without its risks, bobsleigh is definitely not for the faint hearted. I was absolutely petrified the first time I faced a proper run on the track. 

We built up to that moment so much in preliminary training that in a sense it felt natural. But you do have in your mind that you are travelling at 90mph and sometimes the sleigh crashes – that is a concern that you just have to accept at the end of the day.

Freshfields' offices on Fleet Street seem a long way from Sochi, but I'm committed to the law 100%. I studied it at university, before my life took a slightly different turn, but I definitely want to qualify. I'm planning to take the New York Bar exam in the next year or so.

But I can't say for sure where I'll be in five years' time. There's only so long that I can be a professional athlete. I obviously can't do it forever and I'll just have to cross that bridge when it comes. But my life has been so unpredictable so far. Being on GB's bobsleigh team was never on my radar and now it is, so you never know!

I like to think everything happens for a reason. If I had entered the sport back in 2008 when I was first approached, it would have been a lot more difficult for me. 

UK Sport has invested a lot in bobsleigh since then and provides funding for all my training, accommodation and flights. Without this financial support, I'd need to find a sponsor.

Once the winter season is over, the balancing act will resume. I will combine my training with Linford to ensure I maintain my peak physical fitness in the lead up to Sochi 2014 with work as a paralegal at Freshfields from 2pm to 8.30pm.