Corcoran says in her website that the Canterbury man had used "a huge dose of old-fashioned Kiwi ingenuity" to streamline her sled.
She and fellow skeleton racer Kelly Moffat had talked to Gurney when he was one of the guest speakers at the New Zealand Olympic Committee's forum for Turin hopefuls at Wanaka in May.
Gurney apparently expressed surprise at how much duct tape they had on their sleds. "Steve thought he could make the padding I have on my sled more aerodynamic," Corcoran said.
He took her sled away after the forum and it duly came back a fortnight ago "looking fantastic and fast", Corcoran said.
Gurney had also arranged for a friend, Milton Bloomfield, to fix a few cracks in the fibreglass and provide a shiny black paint job. Bloomfield was the designer of the bike with which cyclist Sarah Ulmer won Olympic gold at Athens.
The Wanaka-based athlete, formerly of Diamond Harbour, will be heading to the northern hemisphere in about two months to continue her Winter Olympic qualifying campaign.
Meanwhile she has been benefiting from a week-long off- season training camp with the United States team in Calgary, Canada.
Part of New Zealand's "long list" for Turin, Corcoran is just back home from training at Canada Olympic Park's ice house, a year- round indoor push training facility.
Corcoran said she had problems the first few days with the shoulder she injured on the trampoline three months ago. But she was finally able to train "totally pain-free" after taking anti-inflammatories and pain- killers and locking down the shoulder with padding.
After starting to push two- handed followed by a switch to one, Corcoran achieved a push time only five one-hundredths of a second off the fastest she achieved there in February. "Starting with two hands gives me a more solid push off the block," she said.
"Being here is making me so excited for the season."