Tearful Alcott considers her future
Sunday February 28, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

The line between success and failure is very, very thin.

If Alcott had won a medal she would have been made for life.  Sponsors would have come forward, lucrative endorsement deals would have materialised and she would have gone down in British sporting history.

However 11^th place will not bring such things.  It is a fact of sporting life.

She came 13^th in the Downhill.

She has though overcome enormous difficulties to achieve what she has done.

For starters the financial crisis that hit Snowsport GB could hardly have come at a worse time as the governing body has been in difficulties for months and went into administration on the eve of the Olympics as we reported here.

After the missed gate in the slalom her Olympic dreams ended.

Afterwards she spoke to the media and voiced concerns about the future.

"I feel I'm fighting against everything - it's hard to keep throwing myself into these difficult races. I'm out of my money, my sponsors Witan have been so amazing to me over the last nine years but it's a really expensive sport. I just don't know where I am going from here," she says.

"I know that I have a lot more to offer to the sport, I know that I can be the best and I still have that belief, it is just finding companies out there that have that belief too.

I think no athlete would choose to deal with that situation once they are racing and in the biggest race of their career but I don't know what is happening from here. I've got one car... I can't afford to have my physio travel with me and I could be the first Brit to reach the (World Cup) finals of the super-G ever."

As well as the funding problems she also had to deal with the recent death of her mother and a broken ankle last year.

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