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“Usually I train twice a day during the week and have Saturday and Sunday off. I don’t do much mental preparation for events – I tend to think that mental strength is something that is in your genetics; either you can perform under pressure or you can’t. Experience can only compensate so much.”PREPARATION“Whether it’s skeleton or anything else, I think you need to love what you’re doing. Then, you can achieve anything.”PASSIONFAMILY SUPPORT“There are no secrets between my brother [Tomass] and me. Even though we’re competing against each other, if one of us finds a good line or makes an error during a run, we share that information.”“My home is my castle and I can relax there without going out for days. But I also love practising other sports in my spare time, like ice hockey. I often join a team for training.”DOWN TIMEPYEONGCHANG“Every Olympic season usually starts slowly, as our preparation is focused on reaching our peak for the Games. It is a bit different to our usual World Cup preparation. Looking ahead to PyeongChang 2018, I will be aiming to show my best in the right place at the right time – just like every athlete. I want to be able to say to myself that I did everything I could to be at my best.”“I think athletes in every professional sport can be too crazy about the little details and that has been my mistake in the past; I was thinking too much. Before my daughter was born, my life was about skeleton 24/7. Now, I try to spend more time with my family. After my career, I will try to pay back all the time that I have had to spend away from them.”PERSPECTIVE“I was 11 or 12 years old when I did my first skeleton runs down the track in Sigulda [in Latvia]. My father had bought a sled from Norway and was working at the track, so I was always around and it was natural that I would want to try it. I was probably attracted to the speed, but I had no big plans for the future when I first tried it; I was just enjoying the moment.”OLYMPIC EXPERIENCESINSPIRATION“My father went to the Olympic Winter Games Calgary 1988 and I loved looking at all his photos. That really strengthened my desire to compete in the Games one day. In Turin in 2006, I was young and just happy to be there. By 2010, in Vancouver, I was ready to compete for medals but I made some strategic mistakes. In Sochi in 2014, I was very well prepared.”MARTINS DUKURSAGE: 32 NOC: LATVIA DISCIPLINE: SKELETON KEY ACHIEVEMENTS: 2x OLYMPIC SILVER MEDALLIST (2010, 2014); 5x WORLD CHAMPION (2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017); 7x OVERALL WORLD CUP CHAMPIONDESTINATION PYEONGCHANG52 OLYMPIC REVIEW