He had been working with the British Bobsleigh Association (BBSA) in a consultancy capacity for the past three months following the post-Vancouver reviews, where the two and four-men British crews both crashed.

The women's team of Gillian Cooke and Nicola Minichiello, who went into Vancouver as world champions, also failed to finish after crashing out in the third run.

Mark Carter, BBSA's performance coordinator, said: "Gary was our first choice following initial discussions post-Vancouver.

"He has considerable experience within performance directorates of both summer and winter sports and has already established performance dialogue with all our key partners and agencies.

"He has presented to the board of British Bobsleigh some excellent and innovative plans to build a sustainable and successful performance programme."

The 49-year-old from Hemel Hempstead managed Britain's curling teams at the Vancovuer Olympics and was formerly the performance manager at British Judo.

He has also worked for seven years in professional football as a sports scientist, rehabilitation, conditioning coach,

Anderson has wasted no time in the role and was present at the first round of selections at the University of Bath last weekend. 

He said: "I had no hesitation in taking up the role once we had a plan in place.

"My first job will be to establish a coaching network that supports our athletes, irrespective of our level of funding we have to strive to do things right, we will have in place exacting performance standards that everyone will abide by, from the coaching staff through to the athletes. "

Anderson hopes to identify athletes from other sports with the potential to make the transition to bobsleigh.

"We have the talent in the UK to be amongst the top nations in the sport of bobsleigh," he said.

"My job is to provide the strategy and framework for our coaches to be able to identify this talent and develop it to be ready to podium in Sochi in 2014."

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