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Alcott battles through illness to finish 11^th in Sweden

Chemmy Alcott (27, Twickenham), Britain’s number one skier, continued her run of form in the lead up to the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver (February 2010), finishing joint 11^th in the latest leg of the Audi FIS World Cup tour in Are, Sweden.

Competing in the Giant Slalom, Alcott produced some good, clean skiing in the first run on an unforgiving course, however unfortunately hooked her arm in the control gate on the bottom third of the course costing her valuable time and putting her in 14^th position.  The second run was equally tough but Alcott relaxed and let her ski’s do the work to finish in a time of 2:25.22, two seconds behind race winner Tessa Worley (France).  The result is even more impressive given that Alcott had been up all night with sickness.

Alcott commented “I can’t believe it, I almost pulled out of the race this morning as I was up for twenty hours before throwing up – it’s amazing what you can do when you have to”.

“Today was a really important result for me, I went into the race feeling really unwell and not sure about what I could achieve so, after the first run just skiing normally I was pretty pleased to be lying 14th”.

“I think it was maybe being ill that helped me relax and chill out as I didn’t expect anything as I knew how bad I was feeling so I was quite excited by the first run.  I wasn’t nervous going into the second run but I knew that my legs didn’t have much gas in them so I wanted to be as smooth as possible and conserve some energy for the bottom section.  I really enjoyed it, it was a really fun race and I’m really happy to get an 11^th position feeling like I did”. 

“I did inspection this morning and tried to make my decision to race or not based on what I thought I could achieve.   I would only not have raced if there was a safety issue.  I felt like even if I wasn’t on top form I wouldn’t have put myself in danger”. 

 “I really struggled to warm up my muscles as every time I moved I kept feeling nauseous and then I threw up in the start gate which was really embarrassing!” 

The result is the second top fifteen performance from Alcott within a week after her 15^th place in Aspen, Colorado last weekend.  Alcott continued “Aspen really knocked my confidence because of what happened [33^rd in the Downhill] but in the end it was because I hit a rock.  However it’s really hard to justify that to people, it seems like I’m making excuses so it has been good to come back today, even though I’ve had one of the biggest excuses, and show that I haven’t’ been all talk and I can ski fast”. 

“I’m disappointed to have to pull out of the tomorrows Slalom but I’ve got a big weekend in Val d’Isere next week so I have to conserve energy.  I’m looking forward to Val d’Isere as there is always a lot of British support and we are back on the old hill which has got some really fun terrain”.

British Alpine Ski Team Head Coach, Mark Tilston, added “it was really good today, it was just a bit of a shame she was sick all night.  She was about 7^th in both runs up until the last split but then you could see that she was knackered on the bottom section”. 

“In the first run she showed good, solid skiing, before catching her arm in the gate which cost her quite a lot of time, and after the way she was feeling this morning I didn’t really have much hope for her to be honest but she did a really good job to fight against how she was feeling.  Her second run was pretty much the same, she lost everything on the bottom section”. 

“The one good thing about today was that she produced two really solid runs which even last season she had difficulty doing, producing a good run then a bad run, so it was good to have two solid runs.  Her splits show that before she ran out of steam she was skiing well and skiing fast”.

The Tour continues in Val d’Isere, France next week with the Downhill, Super Combined and Super G races, where Alcott will be hoping to replicate her form of late.

Results:

1^st - WORLEY Tessa (FRA) – 2:23.22

2^nd – MAZE, Tina (SLO) – 2:23.79

3^rd – ZETTEL, Kathrin (AUT) – 2:23.91

11^th – ALCOTT, Chemmy (GBR) – 2:25.22

For further information on the British Alpine Ski Team athletes please visit www.snowsportgb.com/alpine.