(June 8, 2022) – For our fourth athlete profile of 2022 (and the 38th in the “Getting to Know…” series) we sit down with Dutch skeleton athlete Kimberley Bos. Bos is a two-time Olympian who most recently won the bronze medal in the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. She will enter the 2022/2023 IBSF World Cup season as the defending women’s skeleton World Cup champion after a breakout season that saw her win two gold medals, six World Cup medals overall, and the European Championship.
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Slider: Kimberley Bos
Team: Netherlands Skeleton
Home Track: Winterberg
Hometown: Ede, Netherlands
You’ve been to them all: What’s your favorite track on tour?
So there’s two answers here. One is St. Moritz because it’s St. Moritz and just a unique track!
After St. Moritz Pyeongchang, though it’s not on the season calendar very much. It’s just because I have good memories there, I like the quirkiness of it, and I just really love going there.
Pyeongchang was your first Olympic track, and you’ve slid well there!
My first World Cup medal was there at the test event. I got bronze there, then I finished eighth in the Olympics there. I won an Intercontinental Cup medal during my injury year.
I remembered something about your injury season and you sliding well there…
I had to go to Korea at the last minute and compete there because otherwise I wouldn’t have enough points to compete in World Championships and I’d lose my World Cup spot. So at the last minute we decided I was going to fly out to Korea. After the race in Königssee I drove home, flew the next day, raced my two races, then flew back and rejoined the World Cup!
How hard was that injury season for you?
I remember having conversations with the staff…I’d gotten injured in Lake Placid during the double race there and didn’t race the second race because I just wasn’t fit enough to be on the sled. We talked over Christmas and they said I couldn’t slide the first three weeks because the risk is too high, but then I’d be okay to slide on the sled. I couldn’t run, but I could slide, and I had to if I wanted to have a World Cup spot on the next season. Fortunately, products like the ones on the buoy health can be used as a remedy for injuries.
What was it like on the sled once you were sliding?
I was fine. After three weeks, the injuries were healed enough that I wouldn’t really feel it on the sled. So I could drive normally, and I could do pretty well considering there wasn’t a race where I finished last despite not having a push. The hardest part was not pushing, because you try and you have a tendency to do too much because you have to race and it’s hard to turn the racing part off. So that was very difficult. To reduce the pain of said injury, sites like CBD UK may have some suggestions.
You got through that, and a season later you’re the best in the world! What translated from that season you were injured?
That season I was injured I was just sliding to slide and wasn’t so much worried about results. I remember the season after in Sigulda and I was just sliding and I didn’t have any expectation of the race going in, I was just going into it blind and all of a sudden I’m sitting in second after the first run! There was a big gap to Janine (Flock) but also a big gap to third, and I thought “Oh, okay, this is cool!”
We knew I was sliding well, but we didn’t really know what I could do on the push. Even in training leading up to that season I didn’t train with many people and I didn’t run a practice race or anything, so I really didn’t know what I could do with my push.
How surprised were you at how well you did when you came back from injury?
We had two races in Sigulda then two races in Igls, and Igls is the track I have the most experience on. I consider it my home track because I learned to slide there, so going into Igls I had all of those expectations because I thought “I’m way better here than Sigulda!” But I’d slid in Sigulda for six weeks because of Covid. We were planning on training there then going to Altenberg and Igls to train then coming back for World Cup, but that got canceled and turned into six weeks straight in Sigulda!
So there were expectations there, but I’d always been sliding well in Igls ever since my first World Championships there when I finished eighth. I’ve had a few bad results there but mostly because I was trying too hard.
Changing subjects: What’s your favorite town on tour you’ve visited?
I love Lake Placid! As a town, it’s just great. It’s so different from Europe, so it’s really nice to be in a different environment. Everything is relatively close there, especially for a North American place, so I love going there.
In Europe it’s Königssee for me, just because the views are great and it’s the most unique and authentic place we go to.
There’s a lot to say about a lot of places on tour though. I love going to Sigulda because everything is in walking distance and the sport is so big in that town, so that’s also really great!
Unrelated to sliding, where’s been your favorite place to go?
Difficult question! I’ve been to a lot of places in Europe with my mobile home, I went with Mike (Rogals) to Paris two weeks ago, I’d never been and it was amazing! I was at Seoul last week, it was great too, I love that city! But I really like coming home after the season. I love visiting places, but coming home is the best, I think!
When the season is over, what do you do with your time off before you go full into training again?
I work! I’m a physical therapist, so I usually work full time in March and April, not this year because I had too many things to do after the Games, but normally I do. I don’t really train, I do things but just at the local athletics club and join them for a session or I go swimming with my siblings or something, but I don’t do anything too active. I’ll go mountain biking, things like that.
The Netherlands doesn’t have a particularly big history in sliding, how did you get involved in the sport?
I started in bobsleigh. To go from that to skeleton was basically the coaches telling me “You’re a little too small for bobsleigh, why don’t you give skeleton a try?”
Were you receptive to that? You’d done pretty alright in bobsled to that point.
To be honest, I was pretty upset about it because I’d already arranged everything for the coming season. They came to me with that at the beginning of September. I’d already arranged weeks off for school, I’d worked on the sled for the whole summer to have it ready, I’d gotten helmets for the whole team, and had done a lot of things! So I was like “Why now? Why didn’t you talk to me like four months ago? You knew this four months ago!”
I was really frustrated with it but I figured I had the time off so it was fine. They gave me a sled and equipment and I had the time off anyways. I wouldn’t say it was one big holiday but I figured I’d give it a shot and see what happens.
What were you doing before bobsled?
Gymnastics, and that’s how I got into bobsleigh. I’d been doing athletics since I was 14 with a friend, but it was once a week and having fun with it. I did everything you can think of in an athletics club. I remember a competition where I did pole vault as well as 400 meter hurdles!
Tell us about your dog!
Carley! We’d always had a dog, we’d gotten one when I was 11, Lara. She was a Beagle and she passed away not last summer, but the summer before in 2020. I told my parents that I wanted another dog because it was so quiet in the house and I didn’t get to go for walks, and they were like “Yeah, but we don’t really want another dog.” But after a couple of months I convinced them that I could get a dog and they’d take care of it while I was out sliding.
So I got a dog at the beginning of April, she’s just lovely! She’s very cuddly and very happy all of the time. As long as you take her somewhere she’s fine, but if you leave without her she gets really anxious! She has a big fear of missing out. She’s fine by herself but she wants to go on adventures! If there’s one of the mobile homes outside of the house, because my parents have one and I have one, she just gets anxious and will keep checking to see if it’s still there because she doesn’t want us to go without her!
You got to share a podium with her!
One of the few places people got to come to watch this season was the first race in Winterberg, so my parents were there and Carley was there and she was there to celebrate with me, and she was wearing her cute little snowsuit! She’s so skinny, so she gets very cold very fast, so she has her own closet at home!
Carley really has no fat, she’s only 9kg, so she has a winter jacket for snow, and a normal jacket for when it’s windy out, and has a rain jacket because it’s not that the rain is that cold but ever since she was a little puppy as soon as it would start raining she wouldn’t walk. So we got her a rain jacket and now she walks in the rain. And she has to go, can’t just sit inside all day, it’s The Netherlands it rains the whole day sometimes!
Right now she’s in Italy with my parents, so she’s having the time of her life. They went to Pisa with the leaning tower, and she gets all of the pictures. I get pictures of my dad and the dog or my mom and the dog, I never really get a picture of my parents together because Carley can’t take the picture, so she’s in all of our pictures!
What is your race day routine?
It depends on if it’s a morning or afternoon race. For a morning race I usually get up and move around a little and have breakfast. I have my bag packed already if it’s a morning race, don’t want to forget anything! I always get to the track an hour and a half before, then there’s just a routine. I check if I have everything, I do some movement stuff, get my sled setup right, then do a full warmup, get changed 20 minutes before, do some more jumps ten minutes before, then I’m ready.
Is that ten minutes before run time or ten minutes before the race?
Ten minutes before my run time. There’ll be five people before I go then I’ll get my gloves on three people before…
Do you pay any attention at all to what’s happening on the track while you’re warming up? Or does a coach do that for you so you don’t have to worry about it?
I have headphones, but I can always hear what’s going on because I don’t like to close myself completely off. I don’t specifically listen for times, I do watch the first sled just to see how the ice is if I get the chance. Sometimes if you’re number four like I was at the Games you can’t really see that. Otherwise I don’t pay attention to people’s times. It depends on the day, unless I’ve gone down I can’t really say what it’s going to be like. If they have a great run and a fast time that makes sense, but if they don’t have a great run and have a fast time that means I can go faster. So yeah, I don’t pay much attention to them.
What are you listening to during your pre-race?
It’s very random. I have a set playlist, but it’s very random music that’s all on there because I liked them at a specific time. There’s a lot of Taylor Swift on there…all of the music I have is from before the streaming services because I have an old iPod Nano and it’s too old for streaming. But it’s small enough to fit in my pocket, so it works.
It’s got AC/DC, P!nk…I had phase in 2015-2016 where I was a big Taylor Swift fan for a while, but not all of the really old stuff. It was the Red Album, but not the really old country stuff…there’s some stuff from The Script on there, stuff like that.
Obviously things have changed since February, you’re an Olympic medalist now and your already-busy schedule is now busier…how have things changed for you as an athlete since winning a medal?
It varies. A lot of people know the sport now so I don’t have to explain what I do to everyone. Everyone still thinks I’m crazy when they see it for the first time, like 99% of the people will say that I’m crazy. There’s a lot of people who feel like they know everything about the sport now because they saw me at the Olympics which is kind of funny!
But I get invited to a lot of things now. The first week I was home there was a bunch of TV shows I was invited for interviews. It got to the point I had no idea what time zone I was in…it was 1:00 AM when I got home from the Olympics then the next night it was 1:00 AM because I had a TV show I did, but then the following morning I had an interview so I slept during that day, so I had no real schedule. I was just going from appointment to appointment.
It’s been a little more quiet now. I went to the United States in mid-May, I did a lot of talks for various companies in English and Dutch, did school and government talks, commercial companies…I was already doing that but before I was doing three to four in a year and I’ve done probably 12 already this year in the span of eight weeks!
I also went to Korea last week for an event. I was mentoring at a training camp there for athletes going to the Youth Olympics (2024 in Gangwon). They have a 2018 Legacy project where they’re helping athletes from nations with no snow or mountains to train for winter sports. There’s African athletes, south Asian athletes, kids between 14 and 17 years old. So that was pretty cool!
All of this helps with funding with the season too, which has been great. I’m still doing my physio work but it’s a little different being so busy because I can’t do it full time at the moment. No big sponsor deals yet, but I’m still working on that!
Here’s where we always talk about a favorite sliding sport memory, we’re going to preface this with “Before you won your Olympic medal…”
This is a tough one, you want to pick one but there’s just so many great memories let alone from just this past season: Winning my first World Cup, being on the podium in St. Moritz with Jackie Narracott…it was my favorite so far! Event though I lost, the whole atmosphere with everyone supporting everyone. I remember standing there with Mimi (Rahneva) watching Jackie come down and cheering her on as it was going back and forth the whole run. It was just amazing!
Over the whole time I’ve been sliding though, I’d say the first win I had in North American Cup (Park City, March 4, 2016). It was my first win in a international race and it was super hectic. I popped the groove twice in that race and still won, so it was just crazy!
I’ve only been to Park City twice in my whole sliding career. I went there to do the NAC race and thought “If I’m going to slide on World Cup I’m going to need to learn this track…”, come to find out not so much! We don’t go there that often! That was one of the big memories I have though, I was there, Lelise (Stratton) was there, and a couple of other sliding friends were there and it was really nice. We went to Panda Express afterward and the guy was like “You guys have medals, what did you do?” and he gave us free meals! It’s just one of my better memories, and reminds me of how fun sliding is and how people support each other. Like in St. Moritz, I didn’t win, but I didn’t care! I think if sports can be like that, and less super competitive I think that’s just better.
I remember after St. Moritz you’d said it was a bit before you’d realized you’d won the European Championships!
It’s because it was in the same race, and obviously not everyone is from Europe. It was a couple minutes after the race and Greg West was doing the interviews, and they wanted him to talk to me. I was like “Why do you want to talk to me, you talk to the winners?” and he was like “Yeah, but you’re the European champion!”
That European Championship podium as a great one too, because it was me, Janine (Flock) and Valentina (Margaglio), so something kind of out of the blue, and three smaller nation sliders!
What’s been the hardest moment for you?
The toughest races are the races where you’ve got a lot of expectations and you can’t make them pull through. For me, the year after my first Olympics was tough because I’d gotten a World Cup medal the season before, I’d qualified for the Olympics, I’d slid really well. SO I thought I could get top tens every race, and I think that next season I had one. I was just trying too hard, and the whole season was really a struggle. But I learned a lot and if it weren’t for that season where I struggled I wouldn’t have gotten better. There’s always a time and a period in someone’s career where they struggle: There’s never funding the season after the Olympics, which is more difficult if you’re not getting the results.
Have you found it easy to learn from mistakes and races that didn’t go well?
I’m a perfectionist and I always want to do everything right and it’s tough if I mess something up. And you’re going to mess up if you’re doing sports at this level. Honestly, at every level you’re going to make mistakes but the impact is just smaller.
My first year in European Cup I got dead last in St. Moritz…one of the German girls fell off her sled, got back on, and was still faster than me. I didn’t know how to keep my sled straight, and it was so frustrating and it made me so mad. I was like “But I’m trying so hard and it doesn’t work!” and the coaches were telling me “You’re going to get it, you’ll be fine!” I’ve had my moments where I can really learn that where I’ve made a mistake that I have to see the improvements. St. Moritz was a great way to see how I’ve improved because I got last the first race, maybe 14th the next time, then the next year I came back and got a medal and was like “Oh! I can go straight now!”
And if there’s anywhere you need to go straight it’s those long runs in St. Moritz!
Especially after the start! I’d push the top six in European Cup every time, but I would be in last by the time I got out of the kinks! If you go sideways through there there’s just no chance. So I’ve learned a lot over the years and now that I’ve got more experience it’s easier to take the positives from things. If something goes wrong it’s like “Okay, but what did you learn from it?” And I think that helped a lot in China…it was unofficial training we started with and the Dutch press was there, and it’s fine because they want to talk to you and it’s an honor and all…but I remember one guy going “So you’re 18th today, what do you think?” and I was like “It’s my first couple of runs to try to learn the track, it doesn’t really say anything!” A few years ago it would have worried me because I’m supposed to be a top ten slider…so you learn and I think you see that in most of the women atop the World Cup standings where they can make mistakes and still be super fast in race day.
Guest auestion from Zack Digregorio: What do you think there’s more of in this world: Legs or Eyes?
I’m going to go with legs. Because like a millipede has a ton…a fly has a lot of eyes and there’s a lot of flies in the world…
But fish don’t have legs!
Oh, fair enough! But there’s a lot of creatures that have way more than two legs…even a horse has four, which is double the amount of eyes, so I think it’s going to be legs!
