FORMER Cockermouth church pastor Ian Woods, who twice competed in the Winter Olympic Games, has been appointed director of a corporate events and training business in the Lake District.

Ian, 40, competed at the Winter Olympics in Albertville and Lillehammer in the 1990s.

His sport, the biathlon, combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting.

He went on to coach the British biathlon team up to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 and then to coach the only British male competitor to reach the event at Turin last winter. He has also worked as a commentator for Eurosport and as director of professional development at the YMCA.

Ian, who spent nearly six years as pastor at the Cockermouth Christian Centre, has teamed up with Onesimus, who organise a range of corporate events based at Low Wood, Windermere.

He said: “As a coach, it is my role to help sportsmen and women to achieve the highest levels of performance. I’ll be making use of that experience at Onesimus to develop programmes that will help organisations to raise the performance of their teams.”

Ian believes his own experience as a biathlete will be useful in his new role.

He said: “The biathlon really is a marriage made in hell. Cross-country skiing and rifle shooting are two completely different sports. To be able to master two such contrasting disciplines and then marry them together is obviously very challenging.

“Many people, particularly managers, also need to be able to master a number of contrasting skills as part of their jobs and corporate training can help them to develop the confidence and techniques they need.”

Ian left the Olympic team in 1994 to take up his post as pastor of the church in Cockermouth. He later moved to Galloway where he combined his church work with coaching the national team up to Salt Lake City.

In the army for 12 years with the Royal Engineers, for the last four he has worked for the YMCA.

He and wife Nicky have five children, aged from three to 12 years. He is still an elder in a church in Windermere and was back in Cockermouth last month to speak at his former church group.