The Big Feature: Skiing: Britain Climbing the Slope

For two or three days last week, the weather made it possible to believe we were a proper winter sports nation. Now the milder weather is returning, the onus is back on our professional skiers - and snowboarders - to convince the world with their increasingly impressive efforts that we are more than just a bunch of enthusiastic aprés-skiers.

Once, British skiing produced one-off wonders, performers such as Konrad Bartelski, who finished second in a men's World Cup downhill in 1981, and Davina Galica, who was fourth in an equivalent women's race in 1970. Only in the past few years have we managed to establish any strength in depth, not that anyone really noticed. At last, though, even this may be changing as the gritty persistence of slalomist Alain Baxter, who says he has always felt the equal of his alpine counterparts on the snow, and the all-round talent of Chemmy Alcott give visibility to a British team who are emerging from years of irrelevance.

Nick Fellows, who has been close to competitive British skiing for 20 years, first as a member of the national team and more recently as a television commentator who is friendly with many of Europe's élite skiers, believes Baxter, 30, and the 21-year-old Alcott have the skill and drive to win Olympic medals, maybe even titles. He admires Baxter's undimmed passion for the sport after the demoralising drug scandal that deprived him of a bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics and says: 'I think Alain will have the last laugh at the 2006 Olympics in Turin.'

Fellows describes Alcott, who had the best finish by a British female in a downhill since Galica when she came ninth in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, last month, as 'a very, very talented and gifted skier who works her butt off' and adds: 'Once an athlete knows they can do it, once that penny drops, there's no stopping them. And there's no stopping Chemmy. These days she can't get to ski races quickly enough.'

Baxter's brother Noel, 22, whose twentieth place on his Olympic debut in 2002 went almost unnoticed in the wash of publicity that followed Alain's failed drug test, and another Scot, 26-year-old Finlay Mickel, a determined downhiller, who is within a heartbeat of being a World Cup contender, are just two other members of a British squad with unprecedented depth. There is dimension, too, with Lesley McKenna, a cousin of the Baxters, and Zoe Gillings from the Isle of Man excelling in the no longer peripheral snowboarding disciplines.

In common with a number of sports, competitive alpine skiing owed much to British influence in its formative years. We had the first national skiing administration, the Ski Club of Great Britain, founded in 1903, and it was a Briton, Arnold Lunn, whose travel-agent father organised the first skiing trips to Switzerland, who pioneered the modern form of downhill racing and slalom competitions through pairs of flagged 'gates'. Inevitably, the locals did it much better than we ever did and the Brits have been largely admired over the years for the amount of money they have happily shelled out to ski abysmally.

So what has changed things? Crucially, it seems, those early, one-off achievers did not perform in vain. They kept others interested so that isolated success stories continued to happen, notably, in more recent times, the Bell brothers, Martin and Graham. Then, as more money was made available, it became possible to invest in those who showed promise. In true British style, this flow of funds has not always been consistent and eight years ago the then British Ski Federation showed commendable sense by making the quality of coaching a priority when backing for the sport dipped disastrously.

'Each generation of racers has performed better,' says Fellows, 'which has allowed them to apply for better support. And as results improve, the Government prick up their ears, the British Olympic Association prick up their ears and all of a sudden skiing isn't about wealthy people from privileged backgrounds whose fathers are diplomats and live in the Swiss Alps; skiing is a sport with a pathway where young people from whatever background have an equal chance.'

Still, Snowsport GB, the relatively new name for the national authority that reflects snowboarding's growing influence (the word ski has been removed from the title for the first time), are not a well-off organisation. Grants from UK Sport and commercial sponsorship will bring in an income for 2003-04 of around £700,000, which is a fraction of what Austria, Switzerland and the other major alpine skiing nations have at their disposal.

It is, though, just about adequate, and more promises to follow. As Fellows says: 'We've always had good athletes, but we've never had the system or the facilities to take them to world-class level. What we've got now, for the first time, is the ability to nurture this talent.'

The amenities available to our skiers are beyond anything they have ever had. The training base at Lofer in Austria, established three years ago close to a variety of training facilities, has accommodation for 42 athletes together with gyms, a medical room, sauna and space for relaxation. 'It has made a phenomenal difference to our athletes,' says Fiona McNeilly, Snowsport GB's operations director. 'They used to trek around the Alps in a bus with no home-from-home to go to. Now they have somewhere to come back to.'

To illustrate the lengths others will go to create familiar surroundings, she cites the case of the world champion American racer Bode Miller, whose desire to have his own base has led him to invest in a huge motorised home complete with domestic and technical facilities.

The other major investment is in a coaching staff that is led by Christian Schwaiger, an Austrian with his country's highest and famously exacting C-level qualification who is described by McNeilly as 'the most inspiring coach I've ever worked with'. Schwaiger, a former competitor on the World Cup and professional circuits, is admired by the British team for his dedication and obsessive attention to detail.

Something else has changed to suit the British: the number of years skiers compete. The money they can now make enables them to keep going much longer and it is now routine to continue racing beyond your mid-twenties. This is the same for all countries, it has not been unusual this season for the average age of the World Cup podium finishers to be well over 30, but it particularly suits the British, who, without the advantage of having grown up in the mountains, mature more slowly than their continental rivals.

Alain Baxter, 'The Highlander' as he is hailed by his considerable band of continental admirers who are starting to recognise Britain's emergence as a skiing nation, will be 32 by the time of the 2006 Olympics, which was once old, but could now be regarded as his prime. A few years ago he might never have found out how good he would become because he was into his mid-twenties before he made his big move in the world rankings, rising from 60 to 11 in one year. It is why Noel Baxter is able to say: 'I know there is not big pressure to get there and I should not be impatient to do so.'

Chemmy Alcott told me recently that she intends to continue competing until she is 33, which she reaches in 2015, 'barring injuries and having babies'. If she does go on that long, she will take part in three more Olympics. Alcott says she may not have had the start of her European rivals, but points to the great Italian Alberto Tomba, who did not take up the sport until he was 14 and became one of the best technical skiers. 'It's the natural ability you're born with and whether you put it to the right use or not,' she says.

Maybe, just maybe, the world's mountain slopes are finally becoming a level playing field for Britain's skiers.

Best in 2004
Alain Baxter 11th Slalom, Madonna di Campiglio

Chemmy Alcott 9th Downhill, Cortina d'Ampezzo 11th Super G, Lake Louise 16th Giant Slalom, Maribor

Lesley McKenna 1st Halfpipe, Tandadalen