A Helston sailor swapped his flippers for snowshoes when he formed part of a bobsleigh team battling it out in Germany.

Leading diver Sean Dunstan, from RNAS Culdrose, took on some of the army's best sportsmen and women at the Army Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton Championships, in which he was invited to compete in the Skeleton Bob event, travelling down the ice head first on a light-weight bob at up to 120kph.

Held in the appropriately named Winterberg, central Germany, temperatures dropped to a chilly -11C over the course of the event, making conditions difficult for both participants and spectators alike and leading to an unusually high number of crashes during training.

Sean, 29, said: "The local ambulance services have definitely had a busy few days. It's a very technical track anyway - there are 14 turns over the 1,300m - but the cold weather has made the ice particularly fast."

Thankfully there were no serious injuries and after a day or two of rest, most of the injured parties were able to continue sliding.

Sean, a former Helston School pupil, first became involved in ice sports in 1998 and was the Great British Duathlon champion for his age group in 2005. "I started off in the two-man bob event, but I'm into surfing and when I saw the Skeleton it looked like body boarding on ice, so I decided to give it a go," he explained.

Since then he has competed in several Inter-Service and National Championships. "It's great to be able to come away and do something like this. The best bit is always the first run after you've been a way for a while - you forget how fast it is," he added.

Sean has been in the Navy since 1995 and is currently serving as a mine clearance diver in the Helston-based 771 Squadron.