Brit bobsleigh star Toby Olubi funded his Winter Olympics dream by winning thousands on game shows like The Chase and Deal Or No Deal
Former teacher Toby Olubi admitted: 'Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and this is the way I’ve chosen'
HURTLING down a bobsleigh track at 92 miles per hour requires a certain amount of bottle.
As does confronting the banker on Deal Or No Deal.
And Team GB Olympics hopeful Toby Olubi can lay claim to having done both.
The 31-year-old banked thousand of pounds by appearing on a string of game shows - including The Cube and BBC’s You Can’t Touch This - in order to fund his dream of competing in Pyeongchang.
He admitted: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and this is the way I’ve chosen.”
He will compete alongside his teammates next weekend just five years after quitting his role as a supply teacher.
But despite the sport receiving some funding Toby is only paid a nominal salary and must train five days a week.
It makes affording the £300 ice spike competitors must wear, a difficult prospect.
They are also required to cover the costs of travel, gym equipment, supplements and accommodation.
Toby, who lives in South London with his mum, firstly appeared on The Cube, where he managed to bank £10,000 of the £250,000 prize fund – but lost it all in the fourth round after failing a task.
In March 2016, his stint on Deal or No Deal was broadcast, this time he was more successful, beating the banker and taking home £12,000.
He was then paid a sum for turning himself into a human cannonball to be fired 40ft into the air on the BBC’s Can’t Touch This.
He said: “I did what I do best and researched every means I could of finding financial help. TV game shows stuck out.”
After being scouted due to his 6ft 4in, 112kg frame in 2013, his only term of reference for the sport was the 1993 cult film, Cool Runnings, inspired by the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s Olympic breakthrough in 1988.
He admitted he has found parallels with the movie in training, including sitting in a bathtub to replicate a bobsleigh.
Previously, Olubi, who is part of a 10-strong British sliding squad, said: “Going 92mph in a bobsleigh is scary, but being shot out of a cannon is much worse. I don’t think I’ve felt that scared – or that airborne – in my life.
“I must have gone about 40 feet high. I did a lot of flapping around before I landed in a big pool of foam and started checking myself for broken bones.
“In bobsleigh as a brake-man the journey is out of my control, but at least I have some faith in the driver, whereas in this situation I had no faith whatsoever.”
Team GB, who last won an Olympic medal in bobsleigh in 1998, will be in action from Sunday.