From SharePoint to the Olympic flag: Nicole Burger’s extraordinary ride so far

In 2021, Nicole Burger was sitting at her RAF desk, scrolling through SharePoint, when she spotted a notice advertising a novice bobsleigh and skeleton camp. She applied almost immediately.

In February 2026, she walked into an Olympic opening ceremony carrying the South African flag. There is quite a story in between.

Nicole is an RAF People Operations Officer (Training), an elite athlete and the first South African woman ever to compete in skeleton at a Winter Olympic Games. The tlmNexus team caught up with her at the University of Bath Push Start Track during an RAF Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton Association training day.

Always athletic

Her mum, Erica, has spent her career around horses, and Nicole first sat on one at around six months old. “She has always been athletic,” says Erica.

Growing up, Nicole competed with horses, in athletics and in rugby, and was a heptathlete. She joined the RAF in 2019, but hurtling headfirst down an ice track on a tiny sled had not featured in her plans.

At her first trial, one of the coaches was the RAF’s Rhys Thornbury, a skeleton Olympian who represented New Zealand at PyeongChang 2018. He told her she had sliding potential and was particularly good at the push – the explosive sprint at the start of a run, where fractions of a second shape everything that follows.  It was all the encouragement she needed.

A first race, and an Olympic Games

Then came the difficult bit: becoming an international athlete in a sport that is almost impossible to practise in Britain. By December 2023, Nicole was lining up for her first international race, a Europa Cup event in Bludenz, Austria, with only around five weeks of sliding behind her.

“My first race was a disaster,” she recalls, laughing.

At 28, the conventional GB pathway was effectively behind her. But Nicole was born in South Africa. Could she qualify for an Olympic Games representing her birth country? She could, and she did.

At Milano Cortina 2026, she became the first South African woman to qualify for the Olympic skeleton competition, was chosen to carry the flag at the opening ceremony, and finished 25th.

That number tells you almost nothing. Nicole estimates she arrived with at least three years less sliding experience than anyone else in the field, in a sport where experience is built one run at a time.

The recognition has kept coming. In October 2026, Nicole was named RAF Sportswoman of the Year at the RAF Sport Awards, held at the RAF Club in London. The award celebrates the Service’s outstanding sportswomen, and Nicole’s citation summed up her journey perfectly: “from novice athlete to Olympian in just five years”.

Life as an elite athlete

Nicole is one of just nine elite athletes in the RAF given time away from their primary duties to compete at this level, and is released from her People Operations role until March 2027.

Between October and March, the competition season, she is in the UK for only about 10 days. “I get just one or two days off every seven days,” she says, “but invariably at least one of those is spent travelling – for example, from northern Germany to St Moritz.”

Next stop, the French Alps

Nicole has already made her next decision: one more Olympic cycle. The 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps are expected to take skeleton back to La Plagne, the historic track built for Albertville 1992. That will be the end of her international career, but not of skeleton. She plans to keep sliding for the RAF and to coach, perhaps one day giving another novice the same encouragement Rhys Thornbury gave her.

Athletes like Nicole need coaches who spot potential, training camps and organisations prepared to back them long before anyone knows where it might lead. That is why tlmNexus supports the RAF Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton Association.



“The RAF training camps would simply not be possible without sponsorship such as that from tlmNexus,” says Nicole. “We are all incredibly grateful for the opportunities this gives us.”