Battling Alcott delighted with 19th-placed finish

However, Britain’s best alpine skier in a generation insisted it felt like gold. It’s impossible not to like Alcott, she has always talked a good game but repeatedly seen injury prevent her being able to prove if she could actually deliver on her word.

She had 42 rivals in yesterday’s field – exactly the same number of fractures she claims to have had during her career. It seems Alcott makes up with the lack of metal hanging around her neck by boosting a virtual scrapyard inside her body.

It’s too easy to write her off as a pretty face, at the start of her career she was dubbed the Anna Kournikova of skiing and it wasn’t always meant as a compliment.

However, she’s raised on her own the £40,000 she needed to fund her Olympic campaign and recovered from two broken legs in four years to make it.

And those who dismiss her should try tackling the hardest Olympic downhill ever devised, a gravity-defying beast of a piste that sees skiers cross the line ten seconds approximately before their stomachs.

The 31-year old has barely competed this season and it was touch and go whether team selectors would give her the benefit of the doubt to travel to Russia.

But she repaid their faith, and underlined her own selfbelief, finishing 19th in Rosa Khutor, her time of 1”43.43 minutes just two seconds off the pace as Switzerland’s Dominique Gisin and Slovenia’s Tina Maze became the first skiers to dead heat for Olympic alpine skiing gold.

“I know it sounds crazy to some people, especially when we have such a strong team here in Sochi, but 19th is a gold for me,” said Alcott.

“Anyone who has followed what I’ve been through will understand that.

“When I made the commitment to come here it was about personal goals. I never put any statistics on it; if I had then top 20 would have been massively over superseding what I expected.

“This is right up there with everything I’ve done in my career.

With perfect preparation for the Olympics I’ve had an 11th place and with the most imperfect preparations I’ve finished 19th, less than two seconds off in the toughest downhill I’ve ever skied.

“It’s weird for me to say how much a 19th place means. I went into this sport to go for gold and I believe I had the talent to do that. If I’d ticked every box and not got injured I believe I had the potential to win but now my destiny is to show people how you can fight back.”

Alcott might have been enjoying her virtual gold last night but Maze and Gisin insisted they were happy to share theirs.

Ties aren’t uncommon in sports but there has never been one in Olympic alpine skiing and you need to go back to Sydney 2000, when American swimmers Gary Hall, Jr. and Anthony Ervin deadheaded in the 50m freestyle, for the last time in happened at the Games.

However, it soon became clear they did not have identical times, the official Olympic timers Omega measuring their runs to a 10,000ths of a second but only reporting to the hundredth.

“I don’t care about sharing because we are friends,” said Maze. “We are linked together forever now, so we’ll probably become better friends.”

The crown for Olympic speed Queen might be shared but Great Britain’s Lizzy Yarnold starts her bid for skeleton gold today with only domination in mind.

Yarnold is the hottest British favourite at these Games since Torvill and Dean, having dominated the World Cup season with seven podiums in eight races, including four golds. In five full training runs down the track here she has been quickest on four occasions.

“I’ve always had a love for speed,” said Yarnold. “I just love that feeling of being almost out of control. I started skiing at Chamonix at the age of nine.

“I found myself at the top of the black run and I just put myself in a tuck position and held on tight. Ever since then, I’ve always been desperate just to get back to the top of the track and do things a bit better.”