British bobsledders devastated after Olympic flop

Rookie Hall drove the top performing British sled to 17th, one place above experienced two-time Olympian Lamin Deen, with both teams nearly two and a half seconds off the pace of gold medallists Germany.

That contrasted sharply with four years ago when Jackson's 'meatwagon' finished fifth, a result expected to be bumped to bronze because of Russian dopers.

Jackson described performances here as an 'absolute disappointment' and that he was truly gutted the sport 'now looks to be heading back to the abyss of unfunded sports.'

That prompted Andrew Matthews - part of Dean's crew - to post pictures of Jackson's two-man crash at the Vancouver 2010 Games.

And Hall, who also finished 12th in the two-man, also replied, writing 'I find a lot of the comments unfair considering the circumstances which you are fully aware of yet fail to mention.'

Those 'circumstances' refer to a turbulent six months for British Bobsleigh and Skeleton, with scandals ranging from bullying and sexism allegations, leadership reshuffling and funding problems.

Mica McNeill and Mica Moore - whose funding was axed last September - had to crowdfund £40,000 just to get to the Games – with decision-makers left with egg on their face as the duo recorded Britain's best-ever women's Olympic result with eighth.

And that decision now looks even more embarrassing in the wake of the men's four-man results.

Performances in PyeongChang make for grim reading for the British bobsledders – and also the chiefs at UK Sport who will decide how much funding the sport will receive for the next four-year cycle to Beijing 2022.

Bobsleigh was handed £5m for this campaign and told they must finish in the top five, the same result as Sochi.

Last summer coach Dominik Scherrer resigned in the wake of bullying and discrimination allegations while performance director Gary Anderson also stood down citing 'health issues.'

Lee Johnston was subsequently installed as head coach – only to be immediately hit with claims of sexism.

British Bobsleigh and Skeleton was unable to offer a coach for comment following the disappointing results, leaving Games debutant Hall to reflect on what had happened.

"They made the best of a bad situation," he said. "We had a bad summer, which left us with a bad situation.

"We've had a shoestring budget for this last season and that's why what happened with the women meant they unfortunately didn't have the funding.

"But we came here with the coaches and they've done a really good job with the little resources that we had this year.

"They didn't have the time or the money to make any big changes this season. So for them to put the work in and us to get a couple of medals this season and have a lot of top ten results is a really good job."

However, there appeared to be conflicting thoughts on what had gone wrong on the ice, with Team Hall suggesting the equipment set up for the sled was not quite right while Team Deen contradicted those claims.

Confusion among the ranks but those hard-nosed decision makers at UK Sport will not look kindly on uncertainty.

"We'll wait and see what happens first," said Hall, when asked about the possibility of the men's team being forced to follow the example of their female teammates in crowdfunding in the months ahead.

"That's the worst case scenario but we're hopeful that we've done enough this season to have enough in the bank for next season." 

Time will tell. Sportsbeat 2018