After spending several years risking limb, if not life, competing in the daredevil sport of luge you might think Patrick Singleton would be looking for a more sedate sport to test himself.

But no, the Bermudian winter Olympian has swapped feet first for head first and his ?sledge? for a skeleton as he attempts to qualify for the 2006 Games in Italy.

Singleton, who represented Bermuda at the last Games in Salt Lake City in 2002, is currently based in Nagano, Japan where he is training with the Japanese national team.

Speaking from there inbetween sessions, he explained how the switch, sanctioned by the Bermuda Olympic Association, came about.

?Luge and skeleton are very similar in that they use the same tracks, same steering, the same lines,? he said. ?I had been doing the luge for many years and I had always been interested in the other sliding sports, like skeleton and bobsled.

?I was at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City and was talking to a few Japanese skeleton athletes and they said ?why don?t you try it out??

?Sometimes when you reach a certain level in a sport you can?t get any further. I was really fighting hard and I had done quite a good job but just didn?t get the results I wanted in Salt Lake City and I thought maybe I have to look elsewhere.?

The transition between the two was fairly easy.

?Although one is head first and one his feet first, they are very similar,? Singleton said. ?It?s like moving between 100 metres freestyle in swimming to 100 metres breaststroke or the 100 metres dash to 200 metres. They look a bit different but they are really similar.?

The change came in the summer of 2002 but Singleton kept his new adventure under wraps.

?I didn?t tell anyone because I just wanted to see how good I could get,? he said. ?I wanted to get a few races under my belt and see if I liked it and the results so far have been fantastic.?

He said the switch was not a gamble in his eyes as he felt could achieve better things with the skeleton.

?I suspected I would have better results,? he said. ?A lot of luge athletes have switched from luge into skeleton or bobsled. Luge is more difficult so luge athletes can move from luge into bobsled or skeleton but skeleton athletes cannot go the other way, it?s physically impossible for them to do it.

?The guys said to me that if I came to skeleton I could pretty much start where I left off in luge, ?You know all the lines? they said ?all you have to do is learn how to sprint?.?

That is what Singleton has spent the last two years perfecting.

?I was in Austria with the Austrian national team and when I was home in Bermuda I went up to the National Stadium and got some pointers from the national coach (Gerry Swan) and some of the top Bermudian sprinters. It?s a work in progress but my times are fantastic.?

Singleton?s first race came in Igls, Austria and he came fifth out of almost 40 competitors.

?They were mainly Europeans and it was a pretty competitive field,? said the athlete, who is funding his pursuit himself after having to give up his job with the Bloomberg corporation. ?There were a lot of old luge athletes in it and some who had competed in the World Cup.

?From there I went and did the Americas Cup races in Calgary in December. ?

That was even more competitive because in the World Cup you can only have three or four athletes per nation, whereas at the Americas Cup there were ten Americans and ten Canadians and five Britons and five Japanese among others.

?I placed in the top half. I was 20th in the first race and 22nd in the second race out of about 44 competitors. There is a cut-off at 26 athletes to make a second run and so I was very encouraged by those results.

?That fifth in Igls in my first race made me realise that I have a good chance of doing well in the future.?

As mentioned earlier, Singleton is now in Japan and he says his times are just getting faster and faster.

?The Japanese were very kind in letting me train on their track and because I have been here quite a long time I have built up a good rapport with them and I can train whenever I want,? he said. ?Training with their national team has been helpful. I am actually better than most of them now ? there is only about three of them that I cannot beat and they are either former world champions or rising stars.?

Singleton?s plan for the future is straightforward.

?Obviously, the goal is Torino 2006,? he said. ?But not just to qualify ? I am not interested in just qualifying, I want to do well. I can?t gauge how well I can do at the moment, I need to have a season under my belt to really figure out where I stand against the world?s best.?

Next month Singleton travels to Germany for a qualifying race, which, if he excels, will see him appear at the World Championships to be held in the same country that month.

?That will give me an idea of just how good I am,? he said.

It may be all down hill from here, but Singleton is confident of hitting the heights.