To qualify for one major Games is impressive, to do two in the space of five months is pretty special, especially when the sports are nothing alike.

For Adele Nicoll, it is a delicate balancing act that she has done her best to master since 2020, when Mica McNeill sent her a message on Instagram encouraging her to give bobsleigh a go too.

Now the 29-year-old from Welshpool will throw in the Commonwealth Games shot put final just five months after competing for Great Britain at Milano-Cortina.

She says she is living her “nine-year-old dream” .

“Physically, they both require a lot of power and I train as a power athlete, so in that sense, it’s not too difficult, they relate really well.

“But it’s the lack of throws that’s been really difficult for me to catch up on.

“It’s the feeling of. where you are in the circle the proprioception.

“I didn’t have a winter training and most of the work that you do technically is done over winter.

“I’ve come back and had to kind of cram in winter training in the middle of the summer competitive season, so that’s the most difficult thing.”

Despite those challenges and balancing life with a new throws coach, Nicoll defended her Welsh shot put title in June, a week after missing the UK Championships with injury.

“Being able to know when my body needs a rest has been the biggest challenge for me,” she said

“It’s accepting that the body doesn’t always know what’s in the calendar and the goal was to be ready for the Commonwealth Games.

Nicoll says her time in bobsleigh has made her more grateful for the things she doesn’t have to do with athletics.

“In athletics we just get our kit bag and we turn up to the track, but with the bobsleigh we’re driving the vans around the world.

“You race, you pack up all the equipment and you drive to the next location which could be a 24-hour journey.

“It’s just you and your team-mates, you’re doing all the servicing of the sleds, you’re doing everything.

“Bobsleigh is basically a boot camp that makes you the most resilient hard-working. grafting athlete!

“I’ve come back into athletics now with that discipline and that’s what I think has made me a much better track and field athlete.”

Nicoll was into her athletics from a young age and her mother Justine says she “wanted to run everywhere”.

“She was about five, she was very small, watching the Olympics and she said ‘mum I want to do that’.

“I was trying to explain to a five-year-old how enormous that task was, but she was quite determined she was going to do that.

“We took her to the local athletics club as soon as we could and from there the rest is history.”

But it was the “shiny metal ball” that proved to be Adele’s favourite.

“As soon as she saw that, that was her favourite.

“She used to drag her dollies around by their hair, but the shot put she would cuddle and stroke.

“From a very early age she always wanted to compete, she’s competitive at everything, academically too.

“No challenge is a challenge to Adele, it’s just her personality, who she is, she just wants to achieve.

“She just continually makes us proud,”

After finishing eighth at the Games in Birmingham with a best throw of 17.08m and she’s hoping to improve that mark.

“I know that I’m capable of doing that,” she said.

“I feel like a top five is a real achievable target for me and you never know, if i get it right, I know that I am capable of throwing big distances, there’s no reason I can’t push for for a medal.”

Nicoll’s desire to compete for Wales has seen her temporarily step back from the British Bobsleigh set-up.

“It feels really special to me to be able to put on the Team Wales vest,” she said.

“It’s not the last time you’ll see me in a sled and I’m sure of that.

“I had to do that to be able to represent Wales because if I was part of the British Bobsleigh set-up right now, I wouldn’t have been able to go to the Commonwealth Games and we don’t get many opportunities to do that.”

Nicoll’s hometown roots in Powys also continue to be important to her.

“Putting Welshpool on the map on the international stage is really important,” she said.

“There are a lot of children that grow up there not realising that there is a huge world out there for them to explore.

“I was a youngster from that town, you sometimes look and think, well, that could never be me, but it really can and I’m trying to do my bit to show them that.

“I established an athletics club in Welshpool in 2022, and that’s still running.

“I run summer holiday camps, and I am as present as I can be at those, and I think that that helps because that shows them that I am also a normal human being.

“The facilities I had growing up were so basic that I’ve said to the children ‘if I can make it to an Olympic Games running on like a cinder dirt track and throwing off of an old cricket strip, you can go and do whatever you want in this world’.

“So yeah, it’s really important to me.”

And what happens if Nicoll does win a medal?

Her mother has an idea of what Welshpool would do.

“They’d make her do an open bus top through the town.

“They tried to do it for the Olympics, but Adele just wasn’t quite ready for the bus but I think she’d probably have to!”