Spotlight: North-East skiing star hoping to make history at Winter Olympics

Take ski cross, one of the fastest growing alpine sports, a part of the Winter Olympic programme since 2010 and arguably the most insane way you can spend 90 seconds.

As if downhill skiing wasn't dramatic and dangerous enough, ski cross sees four skiers racing head-to-head on a 1.5km course that features turns, banks, humps and jumps that can be up to 100ft high. Crashes are routine, and frequently extremely damaging. Full contact isn't just allowed, it's positively encouraged.

It takes a special kind of adrenaline-seeker to spend half the year hurling themselves down a course that doesn't appear fit for human navigation, and for the last eight years, Durham's Emily Sarsfield has been just that adrenaline junkie.

Not that you'd know it by looking at her. Stripped of her snow attire as she makes a rare return to the North-East for the start of summer, Sarsfield looks too feminine and fragile to be a queen of the slopes.

Watch her in action, though, and the transformation is remarkable. As the British number one, the 29-year-old, who first took up skiing at Silksworth, in Sunderland, is a regular on the ski cross World Cup tour and finished 17th in this year's World Championships in Norway.

Next year, she will compete in the Winter Olympics in Sochi, where she harbours realistic hopes of claiming a medal.

Her body still bears the bumps and bruises of this winter's competition, but her passion for her chosen pursuit is unquenchable. Just don't ask her parents, Ernest and Janet, to be as resolutely upbeat.

"I think they still get a bit scared," said Sarsfield, who attended Belmont School and was a national champion with Deerness Gymnastics Club before turning to life on the slopes. "They come to watch me when I can, but I'm not sure they'd say they enjoy it.

"My dad's the worst. My mum's gradually got used to the crashes. She's able to keep track of my races on this live feed on the internet, and when my time stops increasing, she just says, 'Oh, Emily's crashed again'.

"Unfortunately, it's part of what I do. It's an amazing sport and there's nothing to match the thrill of standing at the top of the slope, waiting for the gate to open, visualising how you're going to outdo the people you're racing against.

"You couldn't do it unless you were pretty fearless and had a really competitive edge. But it's an extreme sport, and every now and then there are going to be injuries. You have to accept that when you take it on."

In the course of the last decade, Sarsfield has injured just about every part of her body, but one incident in particular stands out and continues to drive her on.

In 2009, Sarsfield was competing in the Olympic test event in Vancouver when she hit a hole after a 30m jump and suffered a horrific crash. She ruptured four ligaments, fractured her femur and tibia, and damaged the meniscus and cartilage around her knee.

She was sidelined for the best part of 12 months, and by the time she returned, it was too late to claim a place on the British squad for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Five years of hard work wrecked in the space of a second.

"My whole ski cross career had been geared towards making those Olympics," she said. "At first, I was in denial. I was meant to be going to Japan for the World Championships two weeks after the crash, and even as I was being taken into the hospital in Canada, I was checking everything was okay with the plane tickets.

"But then one of the doctors said, 'Holy shit, you've well and truly screwed that one up'. That obviously didn't sound too good.

"I came back to Durham for surgery and by then it was obvious it was going to be a long road back to recovery. I was back skiing after about ten months, but my form wasn't where it had to be to make the Olympics and I was left off the team.

"It was an awful blow, awful. And it's only really been the last year or so where I can talk about all of this without bursting into tears. But it's just made me even more determined to get the qualifying positions for Sochi."

Sarsfield's World Cup performances over the winter have surpassed the Winter Olympic qualifying criteria, but in order to avoid another 'Eddie the Eagle' scenario, the British Olympic Association set their own much tougher standards for winter athletes to meet.

Sarsfield is on track to more than match them, and should travel to Russia as Britain's best chance of claiming an alpine medal.

Given the millions that were thrown at Britain's summer Olympians ahead of last year's London Games, that must mean she receives considerable financial support, right?

Wrong. Because a British competitor has never previously competed in ski cross at the Olympics, the sport does not qualify for a single penny of UK Sport funding.

Sarsfield funds her entire winter programme out of her own pocket and through the largesse of a group of sponsors that includes Head, Dare 2B and skiweekends.com.

"I'm going to the Olympics next year, but I'm doing all this completely on my own," she said. "People assume I must have access to the best training facilities on offer, but I get nothing in the way of support.

"I know some of the people in the GB Rowing team, and it's a completely different world in terms of the money and facilities that are available to them."I don't even have a coach. I have to pay to ski and I spend a huge chunk of my time scouring websites to get the cheapest deals on flights and accommodation for my competitions."Luckily, my sister (Victoria) is fantastic and knows all these amazing websites that let you bid for chalets and travel. She helps me out loads otherwise I just wouldn't have the time to get everything sorted."

But is there not a degree of resentment at the way in which the much-trumpeted 'Olympic legacy' from 2012 does not extend to supporting the next crop of Britons to represent their country on the Olympic stage?

"I've spent so long banging my head against brick walls that I simply don't bother now," she said. "It used to drive me mad, but now I'm used to it. Winter sports are not seen as part of the mainstream in this country, that's just the way it is.

"I was speaking to Amy Williams (the 2010 Olympic champion in the skeleton) and she was describing the times when she didn't know if she was going to be able to afford to carry on. I just said, 'That's ridiculous - you've got a gold medal around your neck'.

"It's unfair, and you can sometimes feel bitter that people aren't supporting you. But when I get that medal around my neck in Sochi next year, I'll stick two fingers up at certain people and say, 'I've done this myself'. That'll feel sweet."

Photos: Dan Smye-Rumsby and Rich Roberts.