Perth skier wins place on GB team for Pyeongchang

Pyeongchang: Guest to hit slopes for GB – three years after breaking back in training accident

Three years after breaking her back in a training accident, Perth skier Charlie Guest has realised her Olympic dream.

The 24-year-old has been selected for the slalom at the Pyeongchang Games.

Team GB will take more skiers and snowboarders to a Winter Olympics than ever before with a record number of athletes named.

Twenty-five athletes will compete across alpine, cross country, freestyle skiing and snowboard events with the previous record of 22 selected for Cortina 1956.

Freestyle skiing is the largest of the ski and snowboard disciplines with 11 athletes selected, while six snowboarders will compete in Pyeongchang including Zoe Gillings-brier who is set for her fourth Winter Olympics. Four alpine and four cross-country skiers complete the team.

More than half of the squad (14) will be competing at their first ever Games, including Guest.

She said: “For any athlete to be included in Team GB, that’s what you work towards. Team GB is such an iconic team to be part of that you’d just be immensely proud to be part of that.

“They’ve had massive success in the summer Games and we all want to go

“When you get to the Olympics that’s when you can really say ‘Here i am– I can do anything. CHARLIE GUEST

to the Winter Games and do the same thing.

“When you get to the Olympic Games, that’s when you can really say ‘Here I am – I can do anything’, then just try to get as close as you can to a medal.”

Guest was named in Britain’s world championships team just 11 weeks after her accident in 2014 in Sweden, where she lost control, veered off course and landed on a boulder.

She reached Olympic qualification standard with a number of impressive World Cup results this season.

Ski and Snowboard team leader Dan Hunt sees Pyeongchang as one of the first major steps on a journey which can move Great Britain towards being one of the world’s leading snowsports nations.

Hunt said: “When you look at the athletes and break down this squad, it’s a pretty good indicator of where British snowsports is going to be heading over the next four years to Beijing and then beyond.

“More than half the team will be competing at their first Olympics, onethird of the squad are 22 or younger and only four athletes have competed at more than one Games.

“We are going to be competing in more disciplines in Pyeongchang than we have before and we’ve never had more athletes heading to an Olympics with genuine expectations about how well their performances will stack up against the best in the world.

“Of course you can never predict how the results will ultimately fall, but I am certain that we’re going to Korea with opportunities to deliver more world class performances than a British ski and snowboard team ever has at an Olympic Games.”

enicolson@thecourier.co.uk

Getty. Charlie Guest in action at the Alpine Ski World Cup women’s giant slalom in France last month.