GOING DOWNHILL FAST
Skier Elle Murphy
‘SHE’S HAD A FEW SURGERIES AND A CONCUSSION, SKIING ISN’T FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED’
KEN MURPHY tends to be a nervous wreck when he watches his daughter compete. ‘As a parent, your instinct is to tell your child to “slow down”. But that’s obviously not the idea when it comes to skiing, you have to go as fast as you can. So, while one half of you wants them to slow, the other half is hoping they go as fast as possible.’
Back in February, Murphy’s daughter Elle created her own slice of sporting history when she became the first Irish skier to win a medal at a major championship, claiming bronze at the Under-18 Alpine Combined category at the World Junior Alpine Ski Championships in Italy.
‘It was amazing to get on the podium and see the Irish flag flying like that,’ Elle recalled from her Colorado home last week. It was Thanksgiving, when all of America gathers around the dinner table, and it also happened to be Elle’s 18th birthday.
Not that she could enjoy reaching that landmark too much as she was in the middle of intensive training ahead of this year’s ski season, which begins for her this weekend in her native Colorado.
For the next few weeks, she will travel the circuit in the western states of America before heading to Europe to compete, with her season culminating in next year’s World Junior Championships. Everything, she hopes, will lead to representing Ireland at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. On her website, which is tracking her skiing career, Murphy has used a quote from Serena Williams that sums up her quest to have the Irish flag flying at major ski events: ‘It doesn’t matter what your background is or where you come from. If you have dreams and goals, that is all that matters.’
She has been skiing competitively since she was five, standing first on a pair of skis at the age of two, which is not unusual for someone growing up in Colorado. Her father is a Dubliner who availed of the Morrison visa lottery scheme and moved to Boston when he finished college, initially working on shark-fishing boats off the Massachusetts coast. Going to Colorado for a family event, he fell in love with the state’s outdoor way of life and stayed. He admits that his knowledge of skiing prior to that was minimal.
‘Like a lot of Irish people, my only real knowledge of skiing was watching Ski Sunday on BBC 2 on Sunday evenings,’ Ken explains. ‘I didn’t know much else about ski-racing. But since moving here and with Elle involved, you get a deeper understanding of it.
‘And when you see it in real life, how sleek and steep the slopes are, you get a sense of how fast they actually go.’
Even though Elle (below) has only just turned 18, she’s already had two knee surgeries because of accidents on the slope. ‘It’s just part of the sport,’ her father concedes. ‘Two knee surgeries, she had a tibia plateau fracture, dislocated her shoulder, had a concussion. This is not a sport for the faint-hearted. ‘And it’s not a question of if they are going to fall, it is when they are going to fall. They have the padded suits and the helmet but when you fall in this sport, you are going to get hurt,’ adds Ken, providing an insight as to why a parent may be a nervous wreck when they stand at the bottom of the slope.
Elle seems to appreciate the concerns of her parents, although she loves the thrill of going downhill fast. Alpine Skiing is divided into two disciplines, Super G, which is all about speed, and Slalom, which is more technical. Murphy won her world bronze medal in the combined event, which involves one run in each discipline.
‘Not every athlete does the combined event, because it takes a more well-rounded skier,’ Elle explains. ‘You have the speed side of ski racing but you also have the technique needed in the slalom.
‘For me, my favourite event is the Super G. I do love the speed event. I like going fast, I like the rush. My parents aren’t too keen on the speed event and I can understand that, because you are throwing yourself down a mountain at 60 km per hour, but for me, it’s pretty special.’
She began skiing in the nearby Sunlight Mountain Resort and hasn’t forgotten her roots. It’s one of the smaller ski resorts in the state of Colorado, but Murphy reckons what she learned in Sunlight stood her in good stead when setting out on the ski circuit.
‘There are so many different mountains to race, but I learnt on Sunlight Mountain. It’s this old rickety home-spun place and it is a real special place to learn how to ski. And if you say you are from Sunlight in competition, it always brings a smile to the face. It’s a happy place.
‘A lot of the athletes who started in Sunlight would then go to Aspen, because it was able to support larger teams. That’s what I did, but I will always say I come from Sunlight.’
Such is Murphy’s determination to represent Ireland at the 2022 Winter Olympics that she is doing her final year of High School online, to give her the flexibility of being part of the ski-racing circuit.
‘I am still young. Only turned 18. When I first went to the World Juniors to compete for Ireland, I was only 16, was one of the youngest athletes there. The majority of athletes were all so much older than me, because the juniors is U21. But finishing in the top 30 gave me a real taste for what I could do, racing for Ireland,’ she says.
‘And that’s why after I finish High School this year, I am going to take the next two years and focus to see
how far I can go with this,’ adds Elle. As a talented skier, she has already been scouted for skiing scholarships in American colleges, but insists she wants to concentrate on skiing internationally for the next two years.
And that means a couple of months in America before heading over to Europe in February. As Ken points out, the family are learning on the hoof when it comes to having an elite-level skier, travelling around the circuit, but Elle has been helped by her sponsors, which include Clune Construction, a company that is also tied in with Irish golfer Pádraig Harrington.
‘Elle’s schedule is that she trains six days a week,’ her father points out. ‘If she is not on the mountain, she is in the gym. And her season is yearround. She just came back from New Zealand in late September, she was racing down there in the Australia New Zealand Cup.
‘And for the next four or five months, she will compete in the States in early season and then go to Europe. All things point towards the junior worlds in March in Norway.’
Murphy will also compete in the US National Championships in late March, which has the added advantage of being in Colorado.
‘That will be a big event for Elle, because it is on her local mountain in Aspen and she will be racing against a lot of the top Americans. There will be a level of confidence there, because she will understand the terrain. When you travel over to Europe, and go to these mountains in Italy and Bosnia, you often only get to train on them for a day and then you go straight into competition.’ And her cousins back in Dublin will be keeping an eye on Eurosport and BBC to catch a glimpse of Elle in her Tricolour ski-suit.
‘From when I started ski-racing competitively, every time I’ve gone back to Ireland, all of my younger cousins have been asking me about how I am doing. Since I was about ten, all these five- and six-year-old cousins would be asking me if I could bring them skiing,’ Elle says.
‘It just made me want to ski for Ireland more, and to do well representing Ireland.
‘It is where my family’s heart belongs and I feel proud each and every time I see the Irish flag flying at these events.’
As the ski season kicks into gear in the coming weeks, it would be worth keeping an eye out for the Irish flag and the young Elle Murphy who will be flying down the mountain in her tricoloured ski suit.