CHIPPENHAM-based athlete Laura Deas revealed she is targeting a medal at the skeleton World Championships next week after being named in the British squad on Wednesday.

The global competition is taking place in Altenburg, Germany from February 21 – March 1 on a track that the 31-year-old has fond memories of having won a world cup race there in 2015.

Deas pulled out of the 2019 event in Canada following a whiplash-like injury a month after winning her first skeleton World Cup medal since her Olympic bronze.

Deas, who shot to fame after claiming bronze at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, said she was ‘honoured’ to have been selected for her fifth championships after enduring a slightly disappointing season so far.

She said: “It’s always an honour to be selected for a World Championship – it’s something that you should never take for granted.

“It’s really exciting to be involved again and I’m looking forward to this one, particularly because Altenburg is a track that I really enjoy sliding on and I’ve had success here in the past.

“I’m feeling quite confident going in that I can produce my best performance of the season – I think a medal would be great.

“I’ve had quite a tough year results wise and I’ve not always been where I want to be, but I think the top-10 has to be my bare minimum.

“Altenburg is somewhere that plays to my strengths, so I do feel good going in and I feel I can definitely have success there this year.”

Deas, whose World Championship best is seventh in Winterberg in 2015, feels she is in a good place to improve upon that when shooting down the 1,413 meter course next week.

The Chippenham-based athlete says the track has the potential to fill inexperienced sliders with fear, but now competing in her 11th season as a professional, Deas is certainly not in that category anymore.

She said: “Altenburg is fairly fast, but it’s not one of the very quickest tracks around.

“But what it is, is quite technical, it throws quite difficult things at you which you’ve got to be able to deal with.

“There are some really notorious corners there that some people are quite intimidated by sometimes.

“So I think that’s where having the experience really helps because you get to know what you can and can’t get away with in those corners.

“You get a feel for the track too and you know fairly soon whether you’re on a good line or not.

“It’s definitely one of those tracks that has a fear factor for people.”