IBSF World Championships 2023: British pilot Brad Hall targets title in St Moritz

The British four-man team (from left): Arran Gulliver, Taylor Lawrence, Brad Hall, head coach Graham Richardson and Greg Cackett are top of the rankings going into the World Championships in St Moritz

Brad Hall is not content with breaking new ground as the first bobsleigh pilot to lead a British team to the European title - he wants the world.

Hall, 32, added European glory in the four-man on Sunday to a landmark three golds in the World Cup this season.

After becoming the first Brit to top the world rankings, he now heads to the World Championships in St Moritz, Switzerland, with a clear goal in mind.

"We want to be the best in the world - that is the aim," says Hall.

"It has never been about just wanting to be the best in Great Britain. It is about challenging the best in the world, and that is the Germans."

That long-term goal looked more like a pipedream just under a year ago, as the all-conquering German teams won both the two-man and four-man titles at the Beijing Olympics, claiming five out of the six medals on offer.

Former decathlete Hall, meanwhile, failed to build on the record seven World Cup medals he won in the build-up to the Games, crashing on his way to a disappointing 11th place in the two-man.

He did, however, provide an insight into what was to come, brushing himself down to put in an improved display for a sixth-placed finish in the four-man.

That performance was enough to convince UK Sport to increase the bobsleigh programme's funding from £120,000 to £1.9m, and Hall has repaid that support with the most decorated season in British bobsleigh history.

Along with team-mates Taylor Lawrence, Greg Cackett and Arran Gulliver, Hall has successfully broken the Germans' stranglehold in the World Cup, regularly muscling their way on to the podium in both the two-man and four-man events.

Hall has five medals from six races in the four-man, adding silvers at Whistler and Winterberg to golds at Lake Placid in December and two in the last two races on the Germans' home track at Altenberg.

Before this season, a German team had won every four-man race on that track since 2006.

Hall has also won three silver and a bronze in the two-man and sits in third place overall with two races of the season remaining.

He could become the first Briton to win an overall World Cup medal in the discipline, but it is the blue riband four-man event that holds Hall's clearest opportunity of a world title.

A third World Cup victory at Altenberg last week, which doubled as this year's European Championships, saw Hall rise to joint top of the world rankings alongside Germany's double Olympic champion Francesco Friedrich.

Britain's four-man team has consistently had one of the fastest push-offs throughout the World Cup season

Friedrich, 32, is a bobsleigh icon - as well as winning gold in both the two-man and four-man at the past two Olympic Games, he has also won the past four World Championship titles in both disciplines and finished overall champion in both over the last four World Cup seasons.

"We have been unfortunate, in a way, to be competing in an era alongside the most dominant bobsledder the sport has ever known, in Friedrich," says Hall, who has never finished better than fourth in the overall World Cup rankings and is aiming to become the first Briton to win an overall medal since Mark Tout's silver in the four-man in 1995.

"If not Friedrich then it has been one of the other German teams ahead of us. A lot of the time you see the Germany 1-2-3 on the podium, so you see all the yellow jackets up there. That is something we have been wanting to stop this year, to make sure there is at least one other nation in those top three.

"We always know the Germans are going to be strong - they are going to be pushing fast, driving strong, have good equipment - so we have got to be on our game and it does force us to come up to their level. On a few occasions we have been able to surpass that as well."

Hall, who took up the sport a little over a decade ago following a failed try-out for the skeleton team, is not underestimating the task facing him in St Moritz.

He is bidding to become the first British pilot to win a four-man medal at the World Championships since before World War Two and the first to medal in the two-man since the 1960s.

"At the World Championships we want to win medals in both the two-man and four-man, we know that we are capable of doing that," says Hall.

"Fingers crossed we can come away with a gold medal, then hopefully we can finish the World Cup season ranked number one in the world in the four-man because that is becoming more and more of a reality."

'Olympic gold is what we are working towards'

Hall faces an added pressure - funding from UK Sport is traditionally based on results at the Worlds and Olympic Games.

The British team lost the majority of its funding in 2018 following an unsuccessful Games. As team leader, Hall took on extra responsibility over the last Olympic cycle to organise things such as travel and accommodation, as well as finding sponsorship to pay for sleds and equipment.

His sixth-place finish in Beijing took some of that pressure off, with the resulting injection of funds helping to pay for a head coach: Graham Richardson.

The 57-year-old Briton - who has more than 20 years' experience as a coach with the Canadian, Dutch and Italian teams - has reshuffled the pack, promoting new recruit Arran Gulliver, 25, and moving Lawrence, 26, into the two-man team to partner Hall. This released 33-year-old Cackett to focus on his role as brake man for the four-man.

Richardson has laid down the gauntlet to his trailblazing bobsledders to show they are capable of "performance on demand" and achieve all-important results at the World Championships to help fund the team's future development.

The appointment of new head coach Graham Richardson has freed up pilot Hall to concentrate solely on his role as an athlete

"Our funding at the moment is based on Brad's sixth place in the four-man at the Beijing Olympics," says Richardson.

But it still falls short and has forced him to call in favours from other countries to keep GB's season on track.

"A good result in the two-man and four-man at St Moritz in the World Championships will open the door to talks about hopefully expanding what UK Sport can do for us," he says.

"Everyone else is going forward. We are doing well, but we can't afford to sit on it. We have got to develop our own sleds, develop our own runners, develop our athletes. Everything has got to keep moving."

Richardson shares the same Olympic ambition as Hall: to win Britain's first ever four-man gold at the 2026 Winter Games in Cortina, Italy, and the first in the two-man since 1964.

That seemed unthinkable before the pair came together, but Richardson is adamant success at the World Championships could help turn that dream into a reality.

"For the World Championships we just want to keep doing ourselves proud - start fast, drive well and the results will come as a consequence of that," he adds.

"What we have got in place at this moment is good. With good results it is going to get better. The expectation of this team is to be fighting for first place in every race we take part in."

The World Championships, including eight events in bobsleigh and skeleton, takes place in St Moritz from Thursday, 26 January to Sunday, 5 February.