St Moritz successes buoy Rudman and Bromley ahead of Olympics

The sliders underscored their status as two of Britain's genuine gold medal candidates at next month's Winter Olympics in Vancouver with a blistering performance in the Swiss Alps.

Making light of a lack of training facilities, the partners – who live in Sheffield with their two-year-old daughter – design and build their own state-of-the-art sleds at their workshop on the Advanced Manufacturing Park between Sheffield and Rotherham.

Their technological superiority gives them an edge over their opponents from the more established winter sport nations and yesterday they again proved they will be a force to be reckoned with when the Vancouver Games begin on February 12.

Rudman – Britain's only medallist at the Winter Olympics in Turin four years ago – continued her build-up by winning the women's competition to claim her second gold of the eight-meet series.

And Bromley, who is the design guru behind Britain's bid for Olympic gold, earned a season-high finish of second in the men's event.

Rudman, 28, was trailing world No 1 Mellisa Hollingsworth of Canada after the first run in Switzerland but set a blistering seasonal track record of one minute 9.88 seconds on the second run to win by four-hundredths of a second and move up to second in the overall rankings. Fellow Briton Amy Williams was fourth.

Rudman said: "It's been a great day for us and I am over the moon with the result. This season has been about improving with every performance to peak ready for the Olympics and things are going well.

"Again the set-up of the sled was just right and the support from the Bromley Formula Ice team was spot on. The only disappointment was seeing Kristan finish second. It would have been a great end to the week to see two golds in the family."

Bromley was denied gold in controversial manner. He held a lead of 0.18secs after the first round of the men's event but the German team successfully protested after their sliders Frank Rommel and Sandro Stielicke both had problems when their sleds jumped out of the start grooves.

Bromley, 37, encountered a similar problem at an earlier meet in Cesena but did not protest and ended up missing out on the medals.

With the times from only the second run counting, Bromley missed out on the gold by seven hundredths of a second, with Eric Bernotas of the USA winning. World Cup series leader Martin Dukurs of Latvia was third.

Despite being out of the medals in the World Cup series going into next Friday's final round in Austria, Bromley remains on course to challenge in Vancouver next month.