'I couldn’t stay awake long enough to make a cup of tea' - Former British skeleton athlete on lasting effects of head injuries

Every day, former British skeleton athlete Ellie Furneaux has a headache. Every fortnight, she has at least one migraine.

Both are the lasting effects of slamming head-first into a wall of ice after racing down Germany’s Altenberg circuit at 75mph in January 2018.

Furneaux had won three Europa Cup gold medals the previous season and was hoping to extend Great Britain’s record in skeleton at the Winter Olympics, where women have struck gold at each of the past three Games. But, after sleep-walking through a year of recovery, she retired on doctors’ advice, aged 24.

“I couldn’t stay awake long enough to be able to make a cup of tea,” Furneaux says. “I remember standing in front of the cupboard not even knowing how to make one, bearing in mind I drink an absolute ton of tea.

“There was this one time when I woke up, I was on the sofa and I thought my boyfriend had burnt something on the hob. I said to him, ‘It’s really smoky in here’. He was sitting next to me and there was nothing on the hob, but it felt like the whole room was engulfed in smoke. Things like that were really scary.”

So severe was her short-term memory loss that she was unable to recognise familiar faces when she visited the UK’s only bobsleigh and skeleton push-start track at Bath University, where she had been talent-scouted five years earlier. She had come for a doctor’s consultation, but dozed off during her appointment.

“A couple of months down the line, it got to the point where I didn’t want to leave the house, because I’d been inside for so long, and I knew I was quite slow with my speech,” Furneaux says. “I’d get really worried about having to speak to someone in a shop.”

Luckily, she did not have to make conversation with the miniature schnauzer puppy that her boyfriend, Jake, bought her. Froggy, (“I wasn’t in the right state of mind to argue with my boyfriend, who named her at the time,” she sighs) gave her the reason to step outside for walks.

Furneaux has come to accept and manage her post-concussion symptoms, even if she has yet to realise the full impact that her adrenalin-filled years on the ice might have.

She knows her career-ending crash was exacerbated by second-impact syndrome – when the brain swells rapidly after a person sustains a second concussion before symptoms from an earlier one have subsided – having taken a knock to the chin on a training run two days before which cracked her helmet.

Although research into head injuries has increased over the past decade, little is known about the minor changes caused by the low-level vibrations absorbed by skeleton athletes during runs, which is thought to contribute to the “sled head” or “Skelly head” they can experience.

“I used to feel a bit fuzzy, a bit groggy,” Furneaux says. “It takes it out of you more when a track is bumpier. You can go down a track that’s really smooth, get to the end and think, ‘Wow, that was incredible’. But you’ll never get one that’s completely bump free. There’s only a thin piece of foam over the sled, then there’s you. There’s nowhere for all these vibrations to go except you – you feel them all.”

Early research suggests an accumulation of these relatively invisible injuries could have long-term neurological effects. The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association already limits the number of daily runs for athletes and is in the second year of a four-year study investigating the causes and symptoms of “Skelly head”.

It also insists it has made its concussion protocols more robust since Furneaux retired and is continually evolving measures to improve athletes’ neck strength. Its talent performance athletes wear sensors to measure vibrations on runs.

“When you’re actually doing the sport, you don’t always talk about the issues there might be,” Furneaux says. “You’re in a bubble. Only when you come out do you realise how much stress you put your body through. It’s hugely rewarding when you have a good run. The highs definitely outweigh the lows, but when you come out of it you realise what you’ve put yourself through and think, ‘That is crazy’.”

Furneaux, who works in sales finance, has no regrets, but acknowledges concerns around the cumulative effect of vibrations. She does not dwell on what their long-term impact might have had on her.

Nor is the 27-year-old prepared to shy away from the uncomfortable conversations around concussion in the hope that increased awareness around head injuries will benefit the next generation of skeleton athletes. “Knowing what we know now, it would make me think twice about doing it again, about whether I should have done that extra run if I wasn’t feeling great. At the end of the day it’s your brain – you only have one.”