Britain's Alcott brings new perspective to Aspen

By Published On: December 7th, 2007Comments Off on Britain's Alcott brings new perspective to Aspen

Great Britain’s Chemmy Alcott just stole Julia Mancuso’s iPhone and tried to pretend she was Mancuso on e-mail. Something about sending off a message about a “dirty old man.” It didn’t work. Mancuso caught her just in time. But they had a good laugh. They always do.
ASPEN, Colo. — Britain’s Chemmy Alcott just stole Julia Mancuso’s iPhone and tried to pretend she was Mancuso on e-mail. Something about sending off a message about a “dirty old man.” It didn’t work. Mancuso caught her just in time. But they had a good laugh. They always do.
    “I just think we’re a different mentality,” Alcott said after her second downhill training run here , “because we know that life’s too serious and this isn’t the be-all or end-all and there are so many people who, they have a bad race and they cry. It pains me to see how seriously they take it. I think it’s because we’re involved in charity we know that there is a lot more out there than just skiing.”  
    The all-discipline skier had her best year in 2007-08, earning an overall world ranking of 32nd, and her best ranking was 13th in the super combined. In Thursday's downhill training run she finished ninth. She grew up skiing in Great Britain, chasing her three older brothers around, but they eventually learned that she was speedier than them. “I beat them so they quit,” Alcott said. She is the only woman skiing at the World Cup level on the British Ski Team.    
    Alcott is silly and sunny, and plenty of her fun-loving personality has to do with a new perspective.
    “I used to take [ski racing] a lot more seriously,” she said, “but last year my mother passed away and I had surgery on my feet and I was in a wheelchair for six months and it really gave me a reflective time to ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Is it enough to make me unhappy, and I realized, no, it’s for fun and shouldn’t get you down.”
    Chemmy is pronounced “Shemi,” and she will politely tell you. “It’s good for Americans because it’s like Chevy trucks but with an ‘m,’” she said. “All Americans can say my name, whereas in Europe, I’m Chim-a-ne.” Her real name is Chimene, but just call her Chemmy.
    Alcott is happy about the way she is skiing and about the little things. In the first training run of the downhill, she won the Spring Pitch interval — one of the hardest sections. It was her first World Cup interval win, and she was psyched. It goes back to her having a positive outlook. Every night she writes in her diary “three positive great things that I did better today than I have ever done before.” “And they can be silly things,” she said. “like I didn’t succumb to chocolate cake. They just make you see a brighter side to life.”
    Next summer, Alcott and Mancuso will head to Africa to work with Right to Play to give children the chance to play sports. They might even do a fundraising climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro.
     “Right to Play is sport, that’s what we do,” Alcott said. “I think everyone should have the opportunity to go out there and have fun.”

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About the Author: Pete Rugh