How I Got Here

On the day of my first skiing lesson, I was asked the question “where do you want to go with this,” to which I jokingly replied “the Olympics,” only to be told, that with a lot of hard work, it may actually be possible.

I first started learning to ski in a monoski at the indoor ski slope in Manchester; I had lessons through Disability Snowport UK (who have been great for me, I would never have been able to ski, let alone take things this far without them). In the beginning it was hard. I would spend most of the time face first in the snow, mostly losing the battle against gravity. The mornings following a ski lesson, I would wake up to find that my arms had staged a rebellion; in fact it would be the only time my legs worked better than my arms.

Over time I got a lot better, my balance and arm strength improved, and I started to pick up more speed. Watching back videos of myself learning to ski is something I now find rather tedious, as it takes ages for the version of myself in the video to actually do something.

Learning to race in my monoski was always something that was being considered for the future; although it wasn’t until I went to Austria to ski alongside the team for the first time that I realised that this is what I really wanted to do. For quite a long time prior to this I had been aware that some of the coaches and instructors wanted me to take my skiing further (maybe due to the lack of female sit-skiers), but I was waiting for the right time.

Unlike most people associated with ParaSnowsportGB, I never underwent any of the official talent spotting procedures, instead I just happened to be trialling a different style of sit-ski in Manchester at the same time the Performance Director for what was then known as the British Disabled Ski Team was leading a course.

The new skiing configuration did not work for me, I was trialling something called a dualski, which was very similar to the monoski I use now, except this one has two skis on the bottom instead of one, I could not control it at all, as the extra ski meant it was more difficult to turn, and the person who owned it was significantly taller than me, meaning the backrest came far too high up my back, limiting my arm movement (which is pretty important when you ski with your arms).

As a result of these problems, on the day I was being watched, I skied terribly! In fact I was so out of control I ended up knocking myself out and had to be pushed down to the bottom of the slope. Despite this, the performance director came to speak to me at the end of our session and asked if I would like to go to Austria in a few weeks time. (It did later transpire that he did pick up on the fact that I was slightly dazed during this conversation, but didn’t want to ask, in case it was part of my disability.)

From then on everything happened very quickly, the order for my monoski had to be rushed through (in the end it arrived the day before we flew to Austria, which wasn’t bad considering it was late October and the monoski wasn’t due to arrive until December) and lots of last minute plans had to be made. The trip to Austria was the first time I had ever skied on real snow (sitting down, I had skied standing in mountains when I was younger), and done anything with the team. I have since also been to Landgraaf in Holland for my classification, I am now considered an invitational athlete for the team, I cannot wait to find out where else my skiing will take me.