These talented youngsters live their dreams competing at the Youth Olympics – Darling’s Holly Candlish reports
One factor that should inspire two teenagers from Leatherhead, Olivia and Sophie Foster, in their bid to represent GB at the Winter Olympics, is the UK plan to transform from a nation of plucky amateurs to one of the top five Olympic ski and snowboarding nations by 2030. With that UK commitment and the fact that skiers peak in their late twenties, there’s every reason for the sisters to believe that they can be part of this bold transformation. To date, they have a string of podium finishes, including nearly 30 gold medals in English and British championships, and they continue to develop their skills. The next few months will see whether 18-yr-old Olivia and 16-yr-old Sophie have been selected for the World Junior Championships and Junior Olympic Games respectively – important steps on the road to success.
However, for skiers born in Surrey, there’s one big problem: there’s no snow – so the girls have had to find it. They started skiing as toddlers, competed for their school, Danes Hill and then progressed to Sandown Ski Centre in Esher, before stepping up their training four years ago by joining Ambition Racing – an intensive ski academy based in Austria. So started a relentless schedule of overseas coaching, aided by sponsorship from Atomic skis and Sophie picking up a TASS (a talented athlete scholarship, funded by Sport England). They admit that the daily programme of ski training, afternoon lessons, gym sessions, video analysis and preparing the skis for the following day, requires enormous amounts of self-discipline – which they have in spades – however they also need to be mentally resilient to fight off bouts of homesickness. Last year Olivia spent only two weeks during term time at Woldingham, her school in Caterham, and raced in the Southern hemisphere for eight weeks during a long summer away from home. “Definitely you miss a lot, but it’s the sacrifice you’ve got to make if you want to perform to the best of your ability. If we do get time to relax, I play cards or watch films, and catch up on shows like ‘I’m A Celebrity’. The upside of my nomadic life is all the new friendships I’ve made with people from around the globe – and we do let our hair down at the end of a training camp! Being away can be tough but missing out on home-life is a small price to pay if you want to get where you want to be.”
For the sisters, all the sacrifices are paying off. This summer, Sophie joined Olivia to become a member of the Senior British team representing GB together for the first time in the Continental Cup in New Zealand and the event proved successful for the duo: Olivia secured a silver medal podium position with Sophie finishing a close fourth in Super G.
Skiing is not an easy sport. Not only does it require peak physical fitness but it demands a fearlessness that rarely comes naturally. As younger sister Sophie puts it, “you’ve got to push out and go for it – you can’t be scared of hurting yourself, because if you’re cautious you’re far more likely to crash out. She also thinks it’s a great discipline for women, building confidence and, unusually for the sports world, women’s earnings are higher than their male counterparts.
But for the girls it’s not about potential earnings – it’s about the thrill. “The biggest buzz is when you’re in the start-gate; you’ve got pressure on yourself to perform, to win the race, the fear of injury mixed with the feeling that you can do it, that you’ve trained for this moment. And the happiness when you complete the course, performed to the best of your ability and done your best – that feeling is amazing.” Which goes someway to explain why they throw themselves down a mountainside at perilous speeds.
