Unusual Beginning Is Fabric of Her Career

Cheap airline tickets and loads of carpet.

That’s what it takes to become an Alpine skier when you live on an island with no mountains.

And maybe that’s the only way to explain how Chemmy Alcott of Britain has put together a more-than-respectable performance at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Alcott placed 19th in the women’s super-giant slalom Monday, another good result to go with her 11th in the downhill last week.

“I’m British, so when I get an 11th place, everyone goes, ‘Ooh, where did she come from?’ ” Alcott said. “As if I just popped out of nowhere.”

In fact, Alcott claims to have first skied when she was 18 months old, while her family was on Christmas vacation in France. She caught the bug, continuing the sport as a child and teenager. The problem was, there wasn’t much snow to be found back home in Twickenham, England.

So she turned to a local club with a 400-foot hill, the surface made of a plastic, brushy carpet.

“That’s what we raced on,” she said. “I was actually world champion when I was 13 on that stuff.”

As for the real thing -- snow -- Alcott got that only a few times a year, during holidays. Her skiing might not have gone much further if it hadn’t been for an airline price war.

“I could get a ticket out Friday night and come back by Monday morning,” she said. “Anywhere there were races going on.”

The carpeted hill was history. Race by race, year by year, a more conventional career emerged.

Alcott made the British national team in 1998, winning a slew of national titles over the ensuing few years. At the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, she finished 14th in the women’s combined. The following year, she finished 11th in a World Cup super-G at Lake Louise, Canada.

Courage has always been her strong point. Or, as she puts it, “I’m quite good at talking myself into things.”

That worked well in last week’s downhill, when difficult light made some of the racers tentative. In the super-G, however, a soft, gradual course favored technique over bravado.

At the starting line, Alcott was perhaps too energetic, talking aloud to herself.

“Kind of too aggressive,” she said.

With blond hair and a boisterous manner -- she likes to point out that her parents named her Chimene after the Sophia Loren character in the film “El Cid” -- the 23-year-old can seem lighthearted. But she has a serious side, especially when it comes to the reputation of British skiers.

Part of the problem can be traced to the 1988 Calgary Games when the awkward, bespectacled British ski jumper Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards became a joke on the world sports scene.

“I’m sure Eddie the Eagle is a lovely man, but his effect on winter sports was devastating,” Alcott writes on her website. “We don’t want mockery.”

Maybe her performance in the mountains outside of Turin this month will help to turn that image around.

“In some ways, it’s nice to surprise people,” she said. “In some ways, it’s nice to have people have faith in me, going into an event.”