(September 7, 2023) – For our fifth athlete profile of 2023 (and the 43rd in the “Getting to Know…” series) we chat up with Malaysia’s Jonathan Yaw. Jonathan will be entering his fifth season racing in the IBSF, with starts in the North American Cup, European Cup, Intercontinental Cup (RIP) and World Championships. He has two medals to his name, both in IBSF sanctioned races in Pyeongchang, with one gold. In 2023 he also competed in the 2023 International Fistball Association World Championships.
Slider: Jonathan Yaw
Team: Malaysian SkeletonHometown: Miri, Malaysia (Currently residing in Sydney, Australia)
Home track: Pyeongchang
Sponsors: Pyeongchang 2018 Legacy Foundation | Andrew Matthews (Matthews Performance) | Liam Gough (LG Athlete)
Like we do every week, we’ll start with this: Which is your favorite track, and why?
My favorite track, I think it’s changed over the last few months. It’s a very typical one for a lot of people: St. Moritz. It’s where everything started and it’s just a beautiful place to be. Sliding on the track feels surreal; you don’t get as many vibrations, and you don’t get the stress you get with a normal concrete track. It’s more just flowy, and you can enjoy it a lot more.
The scenery there is just beautiful. I remember describing it to my mom, like driving there is like being in a James Bond movie. It’s just white all over driving up the mountain. It’s just beautiful.
Some folks say they can hear the announcer while you’re on the track, have you been able to?
Yeah! It’s so quiet…when you’re sliding down a normal concrete track it’s all rattly and it sounds like a massive engine. But St. Moritz, it’s just so peaceful. And if you’re getting your steers right it’s fun!
Unrelated to the track, what is your favorite town to visit on the schedule and why?
This is a tough one. I don’t think I’ve been as exposed to as many as some people. But I’ve always like Park City, because it’s so close to Salt Lake City that you can still be in the vicinity to be able to do stuff with friends and other athletes. I think the location is really nice, and the United States in general is beautiful, but I remember flying into Salt Lake City and it was my first time and seeing the Rocky Mountains covered in snow and it was just the most amazing view and I’ll never forget it.
When the sliding season is over everyone takes a month or so off. What do you do with your free time? Do you go on any vacations?
Normally I come home and spend time with my family a little bit. But for me at least I go straight back to work. I’m a physical therapist and a volleyball coach…and I’ve spent all my money over the winter trying to compete and I have to come home and earn it back and save up for the next season.
I do take a month off of training. I’ll still go to the gym and do some team sports just for fun and for a social activity. But mainly focusing on working and getting money back!
Most everyone comes to skeleton from somewhere else, what did you do before sliding?
I’ve got a background in a couple of sports. I used to play volleyball in the national league in Australia. I played handball on the U21 team for Australia. When I aged out of that team, tey invited me to the senior team. I think the team environment didn’t suit me, so I tried to find something new.
I was recruited through ads by Australian bobsleigh and skeleton, and I started my skeleton journey with them! I was training with John Farrow in Whistler, and spent two seasons with Australia until the Pyeongchang Legacy Foundation got a program to start sliding federations for southeast Asian countries.
So for me, having done the sport already, it was easy for them to take me on into the program. For everyone else they kind of had to find athletes in southeast Asia who’d never seen snow before and try to get them into bobsled and skeleton and do all of the paperwork to get federations set up locally before they could compete in any races.
How much did the Korean team help in getting everything set up for a Malaysian team?
It’s not so much the Korean team itself, but mostly through Mr. Arram Kim of the Pyeongchang Legacy Foundation. He’s a part of the IBSF as well, and a regular jury member, and knew what we needed for paperwork and things like that. So he guided us through what to do. But we still had to know someone within the national Olympic committee to set up the local federation.
One of my dad’s friends was working with the cycling team and was able to give a hand with that. There was some hand holding, but a lot of the work had to be done off-site in those particular countries. So because of that some countries that were offered help weren’t able to join us. Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Malaysia ended up joining. Countries like Laos, Indonesia and Singapore couldn’t get their paperwork done and ended up not joining.
You’re the only one in those nations who’ve come into the sport with any real sliding experience prior to that. When these other nations began to show up did any of the other southeast Asian athletes lean on you since you were the “veteran” of the group?
It’s funny that you say “veteran” since I had less than 100 rounds under my belt. But people that know me know I’m always happy to help. Maybe some people may say a little too sacrificial at times, but even on race day if you need my help I’m going to be happy to help. I sort of automatically became the big brother of the group, and they did lean on me a little bit…maybe more just looked at me for guidance if they were too shy or embarrassed to ask coaches.
It’s different when you’re sliding on the sled versus when you’re coaching. So there’s something different you can pick up there if you’re coaching. I’m always willing to help anyone though!
You’re one of the few folks to compete in two different World Championships in a year: Skeleton in St. Moritz and then Fistball in Mannheim, Germany. For folks who don’t know, what is fistball and how did you get involved in the Australian national team?
So fistball is a crossover between volleyball and tennis. It’s played on a grass field and has a “net”, which is just a tape that’s two meters tall. The basics of it is similar to volleyball where there’s a defensive hit, and then a set and a spike. The difference is that you can only use one arm to hit the ball, and it has to be a closed fist. You can have a bounce in between strikes if you choose to take it, so it’s like tennis like that where you can let it bounce or not.
It’s a very traditional sport, some folks consider it to be older than volleyball, but it never really left that area of Germany, Switzerland and Austria for a long time. They kind of kept it in their hometowns and it became a bit of a family-oriented sport and never got to the professional level because of that. And those big towns had the football teams and ice hockey teams and everything, so the sport found its way to be more popular if it stuck to small towns.
I got involved with fistball right about the same time I got involved in skeleton actually. After volleyball I didn’t have a sport to commit to anymore so I explored around a little bit. I found fistball…they didn’t play in Sydney but they did down in Melbourne. So I hit up one of the guys and told him I’d found a video on Facebook and I was really interested, I’d googled it and found that we had a federation so I could I come in and see how I do?
So they threw me into one of the teams for a weekend and after that they figured they needed some younger blood anyway! So my first championships was in 2019 in Switzerland. Then this season I was there as the only player who’d stayed on from that team.
How did you do this year?
We finished 14th. We were aiming for a top 12 but unfortunately we couldn’t quite execute. But the team is super new, and I think most of these guys started playing in July of last year. So we’re still very fresh compared to a lot of the other teams. But we did manage to impress people on the world stage and that was really great!
Also fun fact! Ivo Ferriani (IBSF president) sat down and watched Australia vs. Czech Republic not knowing that a skeleton athlete was on the team. Someone had to tell him later “That game you watched, the one guy does skeleton!” I didn’t know he was there, either, someone had to tell me afterward. Good thing we won that one!
What is you race day routine like?
First thing after I wake up on a race day, and really every day during the season, is I pray and read my daily devotion every day. This sport is so crazy and so out of your control that it’s built my faith a lot. So I really rely on that…anything can go wrong, right? So I really leave my safety in God’s hands.
So I have a shower and wake up, grab breakfast then go to the track and do the usual stuff that everyone else does. Since I got COVID a few years ago I struggle with warming up now. I get puffed up really easy and I sometimes vomit before races because my lungs don’t function the same way anymore, especially at high altitude. So now I don’t try to warm up too hard, I’ll just jog for ten minutes then go, my lungs cant quite keep up like that anymore.
I try to treat a race day like any other day. I know some athletes don’t like to be disturbed but I told my coaches at the start line if you can make a joke with me that’s fine. If you keep me in a normal midset I tend to be a little more relaxed and do better!
Everyone’s got a curve they don’t like, which is yours?
One curve comes to mind: The chicane in Pyeongchang. I don’t want to say I have a bad time all the time, but it’s frustrating because they cut it differently all the time. Sometimes I can shoot it straight ten times in a row, then sometimes I can’t get it once out of 50. So I think it’s more frustrating that I can get it and then can’t get it at different times. I think if I’m struggling all the time then it’s clearly my fault! But that’s the one that comes to mind.
There’s more serious accidents that happen in Curve 12, but a lot of times that’s due to the setup in the chicane. So it’s a really random one that’s hard for beginners because they enter the next curve in a different position every time because of that chicane. You either make it through perfect or who knows!
What has been your least favorite sliding sport memory?
It would have been at the end of the 2021 into the Beijing qualification season. I was still a pretty unknown athlete and because it was an Olympic year there some pretty good athletes around. In the North American Cup race in Lake Placid I finished the first run ranked fifth, and everyone was surprised. It was such an amazing feeling, and it was such a surprise that everyone was cheering me on, even athletes I was racing against. Unfortunately on the second run I just couldn’t deliver and I dropped to 11th place after being fifth in the first run.
So that was a pretty bad feeling and I was really disappointed in myself. But looking back at it the good memory of that was that my coach had to remind me: “Look at how many people were cheering you on. That shows what kind of person you are and what kind of person you carry yourself to be,” and that made me feel a lot better. At the end of the day, that’s more important: How you treat other people and how people think of you than what your results are going to be.
The NAC races always feel very communal: You want to do well but it feels like everyone’s there just to slide
I obviously haven’t been on World Cup yet, but that’s what I’ve heard. That’s just kind of how I am, though. And my coaches sometimes get frustrated with me, but I’m always happy to support others at the track. I remember during the qualification season, Jared Firestone was struggling with a groin injury. He’s my friend and knows I’m a physical therapist. So during the same races I’m trying to qualify for Beijing in, I was still taping him up and prepping him just before I was supposed to race. He was really appreciative of it. I hope that being on a higher circuit won’t change that in me!
What has been your very favorite sliding sport memory?
I think that’s a tough one, because there’s just a lot of good memories! I think the most recent one was me being at World Championships. Georgie Cohen had a big head injury in that 2021/2022 season, she hit her head in Sigulda pretty bad and that was her last memory in sliding sports and she had to take a break.
Georgie offered to come help me out, and I said of course! So she came as my coach and stayed with me and I took care her car and everything. I just wanted her to have a good final memory of sliding that wasn’t her crash. And thankfully she really enjoyed it and we really enjoyed our time together. She was there in the track filming me, together with Alex Auer and his team. But for her to be there with me and to see I could help her change her last memory and that made me feel really good!
