Baxter recalls Winter Games medal woe
Alain Baxter is the Scot who was ‘robbed’ of an Olympic bronze medal. But he is not bitter and his love of the sport endures
THE smell of glue is heavy, pervasive and seems to unwittingly carry a message in the cluttered space of a busy workshop.
Alain Baxter is applying an adhesive to a ski boot. Unspoken message is this: He is maintaining a contact with the sport that stretches four decades, back to the days as a two-year-old when he was fitted for his first pair of skis, back even to the day of his birth as he was named after French skier Alain Penz.
‘I was right out to the Cairngorms, a regular on the mountains by three or four,’ says Baxter, now 44.
It was a journey that ended at the very top of world skiing. It also included one, precipitous fall.
‘Yeah, I still get asked about it. Normally about every four years,’ says Baxter wryly. The unavoidable subject is a failed drugs test. The unlikely object was a Vicks inhaler.
Baxter finished third in the men’s slalom at the Salt Lake Winter Olympics in 2002. He tested positive for a prohibited substance. It was found to be the result of using an inhaler for a sinus condition.
‘It was very, very unlucky,’ he adds. ‘If it was a European version of the Vicks inhaler, then it would have been okay. It did not contain the substance. But I bought it over the counter in the USA and it had different ingredients.
‘But, as we found out, even the USA inhaler was not performanceenhancing or dangerous to the body in any way.’
Baxter subsequently won an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over his ban. The International Olympic Committee has, however, remained intransigent about reinstating him and awarding him the bronze medal.
‘You would think the IOC would want fairness,’ he says. ‘Once I was cleared by CAS, you would think they would follow on, but...’
Baxter is remarkably philosophical about the furore. ‘I have had sinus problems since I was a kid,’ he explains. ‘I still use a nose spray. It didn’t stop me from doing anything but it’s annoying and, when you are in the States with high-altitude dry air, it can be a problem.
‘I took it believing it was the exact same as Vicks in Europe. People are always sorry to hear what happened. They always talk about me being robbed.
‘MPs and MSPs have all campaigned to have my medal restored, there have been a few petitions. But in the end it is up to the IOC.’
He continues: ‘At the end of the day, I have my life to get on with here. I have my family, three kids, this business. I have enough to keep me busy.’
Baxter has also encountered darker forces than a mix-up over medication. Three years ago, he underwent surgery for an anterior cruciate ligament injury and was dogged by complications that, catastrophically, included multiple organ failure.
‘I managed my whole career without really being injured, apart from a bit of wear and tear, and then I snapped my ACL,’ he says.
‘The surgery on that all went well but then I suddenly did not feel so good. I had three weeks in hospital, suffering rigours, fits and they pumped me full of antibiotics. But the fits continued.
‘They first thought it was a blood clot, but I went into multi-organ failure. It was a scare, but I never found out where it came from.’
In the spirit of the athlete, he recovered to go back to his work, fitting custom ski boots at his shop in Springkerse, Stirling.
Asked what the episode may have taught him, Baxter shrugs it off. ‘I just got over it and went back to work. And soon it was winter, and we were really busy,’ he says. His ordeal is consigned to a
I still get asked about what happened at Winter Olympics. Normally, every four years
few sentences. Baxter is immersed in the present, moving about the workshop busily, tending to the concerns of the moment. An attachment to the boot is carefully applied and dried and Baxter finally reflects on a veritable lifetime in the sport. ‘It is among my earliest memories,’ he says of skiing.
His parents are both ski instructors and he lived in Aviemore, so his destiny was almost laid out for him.
‘There was more snow then and skiing became second nature to me. Skis on at two-years-old and a member of the Cairngorm Skiing Club soon after.
‘It was skiiing every weekend, holidays, even heading abroad to get more experience.’
The rise was swift. By 16, Baxter was spending a full season in the Alps before breaking into the British team.
He became known as a driven, powerful competitor. Career highlights include a fourth-place finish in the World Cup at Åre in Sweden in 2001, in a season where he had three other top-ten finishes. In the same year, he finished seventh in the World Cup slalom.
And then came Salt Lake City. He became the first British racer to win a medal in alpine skiing, improving from a first run of eighth to a second run of third.
He remembers the evening with a surprising amount of affection, given that glory was soon followed by dismay.
‘I had two very proud moments in my career. I came within half a second of winning a world title and I was third in the Olympics,’ he says. ‘I know I won a bronze and I know the inhaler thing was nonsense.’
He recalls of Salt Lake: ‘I didn’t realise how big it was until I was back in my room. I was thinking of my mum and dad and all the support I had received. Then somebody told me that I had to go home right away. There was stuff to be dealt with.’
He moves to another part of the workshop, speaking quietly but with conviction: ‘I still have fond memories of that day.
‘Obviously, all the other c**p came later but it was a great day. Remember, there was all the other stuff leading up to it — the training, the work, the staying fit.’
He is part of that Caledonian school that emphasises the necessity of hard work.
He still tries to maintain his fitness but emphasises that he needed no encouragement to do so in his prime.
‘I always believed that if you can be in the best shape possible then that makes everything a little bit easier,’ he adds. ‘I always felt that if you improved on the smallest, things even in the smallest way, then you must do so.’
But amid the hard labour, there was joy. Baxter has the zeal of the fanatic. He now coaches but also enjoys simply being on the slopes with his kids.
‘I wish every British competitor the best,’ he says of Pyeongchang 2018. ‘But I wish more funding was given at the base level.
‘We have the talent coming through but I always say that skiing is fun and youngsters should be given the chance to do it. It can be something for life.’
It certainly has been Baxter’s constant companion since he toddled out on to the Cairngorms, gaining an education in the snow long before entering a classroom.
He is modestly brisk when describing what it was like to be one of the best on the slopes.
‘It’s great when you are doing well,’ he says.
‘You always have your game plan in your head but when it is going well you don’t have to think about anything. It just seems to happen.
‘It’s a rush. In the slalom, you had to negotiate 65 gates in 45 seconds. There’s not much time to reflect.’
Baxter seems impervious to the bruises from the past. The calamitous consequences of buying an unsuitable version of an inhaler or the trauma of a life-threatening illness after surgery must surely remain with him at some level but not on the surface.
‘It is about hard work, knuckling down, getting on with it,’ he says of elite sport. He could, though, be talking about life itself.