IT wasn’t until two years ago that Ella Still decided to take skiing seriously. Until then, she had shown herself to have potential but the sport had been little more than a hobby – something she did for a mere five or six weeks a year.
But when the choice came to either do a sixth year at school or give skiing a real shot, there was only one winner. The teenager moved from her home in Aberdeen to Austria and has been based there ever since.
However, Still admits that when she made the decision to go full-time, she assumed it would be a short-term arrangement, with the prospect of making a career out of skiing not even crossing her mind.
“When I moved away, it really hadn’t entered my head that I could do skiing as a career – I was thinking, I’ll try it for a year and just see how it goes,” she says. “Then at the end of that first year, it had all gone really well and I’d really enjoyed it.
“At the start, everything was going better than I expected and I love training full-time- we have a great team and there’s skiers from all over, they’re not all British which is great and it means that it never gets boring.”
Still’s move paid off quicker than she could ever have imagined, with her rapid improvement resulting in her taking the British under-21 slalom title last year.
It was, Still admits, just reward for the hours of had graft she had put in during that first year as a full-time athlete. “It was awesome to win the British Champs – I skied really well that day and had so much fun,” she says. “It made me feel like all the hard work that year had paid off so I was really happy with that. There’s so many variables in our sport so it was great to have everything come together on the day.”
A hamstring injury hampered Still’s summer training last year but nevertheless, she has made a good start to the 2016/17 season, including impressive 11th and 12th place finishes in the slalom in her latest outing at an FIS race in Golte, Slovenia.
Her immediate goal is to secure qualification for the World Junior Championships, which will take place in Are, Sweden next month. Still is within touching distance of qualification for the event and she has set herself targets of finishing in the top 20 in slalom and top 30 in grand slalom if and when she pulls on her GB ski-suit in Sweden.
As with every alpine skiing discipline, Still’s stiffest competition will come from the Nordic countries, whose athletes have been skiing since they can walk which is in stark contrast to the Scot who, in comparison, remains hugely inexperienced.
“It’s hard for the British skiers when we’re up against athletes from these skiing nations because by the time we are able to live abroad and can spend more time skiing, the girls from skiing nations have been skiing since they were one or two years old so it always feels like we’re playing catch-up,” she says.
“But it just means that we have to work even harder and especially now that I’m living out in Austria, I feel like it’s much more of a level playing field. But when you’re a child and only doing a few weeks a year on snow, it makes a big difference to your development.”
Still is involved with British Skiing at the best possible time; British skiers are making a real mark on the global circuit with Dave Ryding in particular making the world sit up and take notice of skiers hailing from these shores.
It is, admits Still, hugely encouraging that despite not being immersed in the skiing world since birth, British skiers can still achieve global success. “It’s awesome how well British skiers are doing at the moment,” she says. “Dave Ryding is doing unbelievable and that’s so exciting and so motivating for all British skiers to see how much he’s achieving on the world stage.
“His success shows that it is achievable for British skiers to compete with the very best – he’s put in a crazy amount of work but he’s shown that it does pay off.”
Still will find out in the coming weeks if she has achieved her target of qualification for the World Junior Championships before she defends her British title later in the season.
However, despite being somewhat of a late starter in the professional ranks, the teenager reveals that her ultimate goal is the Olympic stage.
“The Olympics would definitely be a target,” she admits. “Next year might be too soon for me but I’d definitely be looking towards the 2022 Olympics. I watched the Olympic Games when I was a kid but I never imagined that could be me. It doesn’t feel like pressure, it just feels exciting to have the opportunity.”
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