Skiing: Britain's Snow Queen Shows That Faith Can Move Mountains

Until last weekend, the idea of a British woman finishing in the top 10 of a World Cup downhill ski race seemed as far-fetched as the notion that the next great female soul singer might be a 16-year-old blonde from Devon. But then those of us who have heard Joss Stone's debut CD know that miracles can happen. And they seemed to be happening again on Sunday when Chemmy Alcott swooped down through the mist at Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Alcott, who is 21, was on her way to achieving the best British result in a women's downhill since Davina Galica finished fourth in Bardonecchia in 1970. In difficult conditions, and with a high start number, Alcott wound up in ninth position, putting her behind a Frenchwoman, two Austrians, two Americans, two Germans and a Swiss, but ahead of several dozen other competitors from nations whose topography renders them more likely to turn out champion skiers.

Anyone whose heart lifts the moment the airport transfer coach reaches the snow line will have felt a bit of a thrill when they heard the news or watched her run on television. British ski racers live the life to which all keen recreational skiers aspire, waking day after day to a mountain sunrise, hoping for a fresh fall. The rest of the world seems a long way away.

No less than long-distance runners and racing cyclists, however, they have to work long and hard to make any sort of an impression in their chosen field. The surroundings in which they train and race may seem glamorous, but conditions for lightly funded British competitors are pretty gruelling.

"Dead right," the successor to such pre-war pioneers of women's ski racing as Audrey Sale-Barker and Esmé MacKinnon said yesterday, speaking from the British Olympic training centre near Salzburg. "People imagine it's all glühwein and discos. But our après-ski is the gym, or a few hours spent watching videos after training."

Unlike the members of more lavishly supported teams, British skiers usually have to rely on their parents for years of support. So it has been with Alcott, who began skiing on a family holiday in France at the age of 18 months and was racing before her fourth birthday. Her parents are said to have invested somewhere around £250,000 over the years in getting her to the point where she was good enough to finish fourth in the combined section of the world alpine junior championships in 2002, shortly after coming 14th in the women's combined in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

"I certainly wouldn't be here without them [her parents]," she said. "And it's a question of emotional support, too, as well as financial support." At 12, for example, she broke her neck in a crash during a parallel slalom race. After another accident, two years ago, fears that she had broken her back mercifully proved unfounded. None of this prevented her from picking up A-levels in English, French, maths and business studies, all grade As, at Surbiton High School. And now she has a personal sponsor, Wilton Investments, which pays her travelling expenses and is pledged to see her through to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. Her good looks bring in extra funding via a modelling contract with Marks & Spencer.

Her success in the combined events suggests that she is an unusually gifted all-rounder, blessed with both the outright speed needed in the downhill and the technical control required for the three types of slalom. "I think it's because I love it," she said. "I ski for fun, really. And if you do all four disciplines, you don't get caught up in negativity when something goes wrong in one of them."

She is still young for a World Cup skier, and her performances have been improving steadily. Last weekend in Cortina, however, there was a sudden leap. On Saturday, in the first of two downhills, she finished 32nd. The next day, in poor light, she was more than two seconds quicker and in the top 10 for the first time.

"When the other girls take their foot off, she puts hers down," her father, Tim, said. "And she's got the broken bones to prove it. But she seems to get away with it."

And for Sunday's performance, she said, she won €959 (£670) - the first prize money of her career, if you don't count the €30 she picked up in a boys versus girls handicap race organised by the British team coach during summer training last year. For finishing in the best position from the worst start number on Sunday, there was also 50 grams of gold. How much gold is 50 grams? "Well, it's like a credit card. It's a cool prize!" And not, one imagines, the last.