Robin Pilcher

This is a really old joke – what were Tarzan’s last words?

‘Who greased the viiiiiiiiiiiiiiine?’ (and you say that with your voice faded off into nothing.)

I was brought up at a time when the two main Scottish ski resorts, Aviemore and Glenshee, used to enjoy decent seasons, and because the latter was only just over an hour away from my home, I was up there nearly every weekend in the winter. Consequently, I sort of became an ‘above-average’ skier – well, in Scotland anyway. At the peak of my ability, I built up enough courage to ‘shuss’ one of the ‘difficult to intermediate’ slopes at Glenshee and I remember quite distinctly, as I tore down the piste with my legs juddering like shock absorbers and my eyeballs vibrating in their sockets, that my brain was screaming out, ‘I’m gonna diiiiiiiee!’ (again, voice fading away to nothing.)

Now, I reckon I probably reached a quite staggering 30 mph on that gentle run, so it is quite mind-boggling to me that a determined slip of a girl like Chemmy Alcott can launch herself off the edge of a Canadian precipice and for the next couple of minutes follow a tortuous course at 90mph, trying to keep focussed on staying upright and resisting the huge temptation to over-edge her skis and lose speed. And then there’s Amy Williams, who has the looks of a girl who might scream on a fairground merry-go-round, throwing herself onto her faithful ‘tray’, Arthur, at the top of a lethal frozen drainpipe and appearing at the other end, with her chin no more than a centimetre from the ground, in a faster time than any of the other Olympians.

It actually quite annoys me to hear the female Canadian ski commentator for the BBC saying, “And I’m afraid she really has let it go now. She is two hundredths of a second down at the last timing point. This will be a big disappointment for her because right now she really should be attacking this course, not thinking about being technically correct.” Oh yeah? Well, my dear, maybe you should think about what you say about the skiers when they’re waiting to push off from the starting gate, because that might give you a hint why there are some skiers who are ‘two hundredths of a second down.’

‘Next to come is Julia Mancuso from Squaw Valley.’

‘And here we have the French skier Ingrid Jacquemod from Val d’Isère.’

‘And here is Andrea Fischbacher from Eben in Austria.’

What do these places have in common? Yes, you’re right, they’re all ski resorts.

So let’s now try this -

‘And next up for Great Britain is Chemmy Alcott from…London?’

Or even –

‘And here she is, going into her final run in gold medal position, Great Britain’s Amy Williams from…Bath.’

You don’t have to be a mastermind to grasp the situation, do you? The cost, the hardship, the dedication that these girls and other members of the British team have had to take on outclasses by far the achievement of those who simply have had to walk out of the back door of their houses, strap on their skis and head off down the slopes. But, of course, it doesn’t win them medals, does it?

And then, a month ago, another hefty spanner was thrown into the already creaking and grinding works when the British Ski and Snowsport Federation, the governing body of the Winter Olympic team, went into administration, and it is rumoured that many of the athletes have had no option other than to fund themselves during the Games.

So, what I’m wondering in a way is why do we bother casting hugely expensive telephone votes for pretty mediocre artists on TV programmes like ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ when we already have true talent which happens to be in real and deserved need of funding? I would much rather watch Chemmy Alcott or Amy Williams walking onto the stage in front of Simon Cowell and his cronies and just standing there, smiling at them.

‘And what do you do?” he would ask.

Chemmy/Amy would turn to a huge split screen behind them and simply say, ‘This’. The phones would be ringing long before the final image of Chemmy collapsing exhausted at the end of her run, sliding the last twenty yards into the inflated safety barrier, or Amy jumping up from skeletal Arthur – the other ‘man’ in her life – in celebration of the first British Women’s Winter Olympic Gold for 58 years.

I really mean it, girls, to you both and all your fellow team members – huge respect.