L a t e s t  n e w s ..... Rachel Adcock and Gerard Flahive win both races at Scottish Dry Slope Championships ...

'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams' (Eleanor Roosevelt).

Chemmy Alcott  www.chemmyalcott.com
Proudly sponsored by Witan Investments www.witan.com

Sept 12: So I have been back here in Argentina a week travelled 1,400kms in a beat up old car from Bariloche where we trained and free skied GS for 4 days, to Las Lenas on Chilean border for downhill training with the Italians...such an awesome hill....two big jumps only thing is temperamental weather but i nailed it from the top and it has taken the Italians 5 days to work up to where Geri through me into this am (and they were still in tears!!) Jumping going much better so all in all happy days except our car has broken down clutch died so chances of us getting outta here right now slim-bo!! But we will face that problem when we have to i guess...

pm fitness is causing me to break into the only 'plush' hotel here and steal a couple of hours on their bikes i cant work out if the guys in gym are trying to flirt with me or through me out !!! language barrier's very exciting...they also have wireless so I am in the loo cheating that system too hee hee

Sept 3:  Firstly, apologies if my usual eloquence (obviously a personal opinion) fails me but after a night under observation being woken hourly to check one’s presence is still present (!!) I am sure I can be forgiven.

Right, feel the need to explain that rather cryptic start…

I am in Ushuaia, unduly famous for being the most southern town in the world, more likely because it is tax-free and has some awesome skiing. People definitely don’t come here to awe at the local architecture (predominantly temporary tin – at best – 2 square metre large abodes), nor roller blade down the smooth, undulating San-Francisco-like roads (mostly unpaved, pot holed, mud streams!). Fortunately the view is out of this world; the vast Antarctic Ocean encircled by huge, snow-capped mountains (now this sounds like a tour guide!)

But the skiing (at this point imagine wild hand gesticulations of kissing the perfect “O” made by my thumb and for-finger!) Yes it is deserved of such extreme exaggeration. Whilst the rest of the world suffers with either slush, brown snow or an abundance of fluffy white powder (great for the tourist not so great for training emulating our rock ice world cups!) here, we are being spoilt. Myself and the rest of the British World Cup team (the three technical boys and Fin Mickel) are blessed every day with different wintry conditions and a hill, which holds every aspect needed in order to iron out each of our technical faults.

We rack up a count of at least 300 (in GS) and 600 (SL) gates a day. So last years panic of ‘Uhoh where did the summer go? Have we done enough gates? Oh, I wish the snow had been better’ will surely be suppressed. I think we are ahead of ourselves, which can only be a good thing. To feel comfortable on a steep pitch already in late July is a really satisfying feeling.

Perhaps though yesterday, this feeling of being comfortable slightly turned into complacency for me when I found myself hurling backward through the air at the bottom of the pitch having attacked perhaps a little too hard. Had one of those – ‘I know exactly what is happening slow motioned crashes’ where whatever you do you just know it is going to hurt. And boy was it a bang. I just can’t believe they used to ski without helmets- what nutters! Can now safely say after a trip and a few standard X-rays down at the local hospital (after checking out the place I stubbornly refused an in-patient over night stay, opting for the rather safer in hotel with hourly check up from my coach by radio!) I am having that post-day-crash, run-over-by-large-truck aching feeling which I am sure after a day of rest and a couple of hours in a hot bath will go away, leaving me refreshed, alive and kicking (perhaps a little more respectful of the pitch!) and ready to take on my last week of skiing here before a 3 week camp physical training block in Austria and then returning to Chile/Argentina for the second part of our pre-Olympic summer preparations (had to end it on an official sounding note – don’t want you all to think this is merely an extended ski-bum holiday!)