British thank Swiss for Olympic preparation

“The Swiss are fantastic at facilitating the training of British skiers,” says Georgina Morris, manager of Kandahar Racing and marketing manager for Ed Drake, the British number one men’s skier.

Britain was involved in developing the concept of international ski competition in the 1920s and 30s, but the country has had limited success.

Scot Alain Baxter won a slalom bronze in Salt Lake City in 2002, only to be stripped of the medal after failing a drugs test.

Four British athletes boarded the plane for Vancouver on Tuesday to begin preparing for Alpine ski races, beginning with the men’s downhill on February 13.

Among them female star Chemmy Alcott clocked an 11^th place in the Turin Olympics four years ago – the best performance by a British skier since 1968.

Morris said that summer and autumn training in Switzerland helped bring the four Brits up to Olympic standard. Each year she goes with Kandahar to Saas Fe in the canton of Valais. Many international squads go there to train on the glacier where Swiss prodigy Lara Gut dislocated her hip in November.

“Saas Fee and Zermatt are very valuable training areas,” said Mark Tilston, coach of 27-year-old Alcott. St. Moritz in the canton of Grisons and Crans Montana in Valais are also well-known to Alcott, said Tilston.

Drake has trained with Kandahar since the age of six. His Olympic team mate, Dave Ryding, is also a member of the club, which is named after Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar, and is based in the Bernese Oberland resort of Mürren.

Club founder, Sir Arnold Lunn introduced the downhill and slalom ski races to the Olympic games in 1936.

Kandahar is intrinsically a British-Swiss club whose membership includes a large number of expats residing in Switzerland. Members have sent donations to support Drake and Ryding’s training and participation in the Olympics.

Morris is optimistic about her boys’ chances: “they are on a pathway to a medal,” she told Swisster.

But the Brits struggle to compete with Switzerland’s top stars such as Didier Cuche and Carlo Janka.

Morris says the Swiss are “immensely helpful” with training the Kandahar youngsters who may grow up to rival those born and bred in the Alps. Future stars may come from the British-Swiss expat community rather than the temperamental slopes of Scotland.

Two years ago the number one youth skier in Switzerland, Daniel Yule, was a Kandahar member with a British passport. But Yule now races under a Swiss FIS (International Ski Federation) licence for the Champex-Ferret club. The 16-year-old has had a number of podium finishes in the 2009-2010 season.

The UK’s Vancouver medal hopes may lie outside the ski events. Another little-known star is snowboarder Zoë Gillings, ranked 5^th in the world.

“I have spent a great deal of time in Champéry in particular over the last few years . . . the facilities are amazing,” said the GB snowboarder, who hails from the Isle of Man, the UK territory which has been described as a tax haven. 24-year-old Gillings loves Champéry’s “good food, good gyms, great accommodation, and great snow conditions.”

But due to funding problems Gillings had trouble training last summer, with only enough cash for three days out of a planned six weeks on the slopes.

The British ski and snowboard federation (BSSF) has been on the verge of going bust several times this year. Alcott had to remortgage her home after the BSSF failed to pay her back the cost of summer training.

Without a federation the British athletes were almost thrown out of the Vancouver Olympics, leading one reader on the Times Online news site to describe Team GB as “2010's Jamaican Bobsleigh team,” a reference to the under-resourced group of West Indians who attended the 1988 Calgary Olympics.

But Morris said the British Olympic Association has found a way around a 340,000 franc deficit.

Alcott has a permanent personal sponsor in Witan Investment Trust, which trades on the London stock exchange. The athletes are also hoping more individual sponsors will come through from outside the UK.

The Winter Olympics runs from February 12-28.