When people talk about Alain Baxter, it is often too easy to get caught up and carried away with the scandal surrounding his infamous 2002 Olympic medal saga, of which he was stripped of said prize after traces of methamphetamine were found following a drugs test. 

The fact that it actually happened smothers the remarkable triumph that preceded it, as well the oft forgotten truth that proved his relative innocence afterwards.  And that is the problem.  We remember the scandal.  Our public thirst for controversy and rumour and gossip far outweighs our desire to celebrate and rejoice the things that are going well in the world.  Need proof?  Pick up any newspaper on any day, and the chances are the front page will not carry good news.

And so it is, in terms of Alain Baxter’s legacy, we often forget the good.  We forget that he went to Salt Lake City and gave the performance of his life, the best ever for an athlete from our Isles.  He was the first and only British, Scottish man to take a skiing medal at the Olympics.  It was definitely him you saw on TV, on the podium, on the open-top bus parading his medal around Aviemore.  Those few days were real.  What followed is better described as surreal, but, as Alain most likely does, in Scotland we should remember him for what he achieved.  That should be his true legacy.

So, when In the Winning Zone spoke to Alain Baxter, Britain’s greatest skier, we wanted to find out a bit more about the man and less about the madness that has stained and strained his career since 2002.  The medal controversy was off our agenda, Alain Baxter the slalom skier was on.  We wanted to talk about winning with the biggest snowsport winner our country has ever produced.  What did, and what does he do to reach a level no-one from the UK has ever reached before?

Well, unsurprisingly, he trains.  A lot.  “Around fourteen hours per week,” to be precise.  Divided up, he continued, that amounts to “two sessions a day, five and a half days per week, pretty heavy going.  It changes in the summer; we go from biking to more weights.  I usually do three sessions of weights per week and even all through the summer we have around six to eight weeks on the snow, doing technical work as opposed to endurance training.”

But Alain is used to that.  He is very much the seasoned veteran of the circuit at 33 years old, and he has seen the life of a skier change drastically in that period of time.  “Back in the day when you trained, the coaches would drill you into the ground without giving you time to recover, and you would be knackered!  But now science and different ways of training have recognised recovery as very important; you can’t just train yourself into the ground and be expected to compete at high level.  So it’s a fine mix.  And with the coaches and the [Scottish] Institute [of Sport] working together on strength, conditioning and other aspects, I think we’ve got a good base now, a good programme.  So we can train and compete without being totally ‘beat’.”

So after all these years, and all that training, what keeps him motivated?  “I’ve been at it a while now, and you get this drive, well I do anyway, that keeps you motivated and wanting to get better and better.  And to succeed.”  What does he define as success, then?  “Obviously there is nothing better than being on top of the podium.  And that feeling of knowing you gave it everything; you gave it your best shot.  And when you do that and you come out on top, it’s a fantastic feeling.”

That is a feeling that we will most likely never share.  The contrast in how we, the public, partake in skiing and how it is for a pro is comparable to playing football in the park and squaring up to Brazil in a World Cup final.  It is night and day; recreation and profession.  A normal person’s ski trip is as much about relaxing (and often partying) as any regular vacation – enjoying fancy restaurants, expensive wine, luxury spas and a generally idyllic lifestyle, with a smattering of piste cruising thrown in for effect.  This concept of the ski holiday is as foreign to Baxter as tasteful ski suits are to middle aged couples. 

“I’ve never really known it.  During the season there isn’t much of that goes on at all.  Occasionally we go out, yes, but you can’t enjoy skiing like the average person who goes on holiday, goes out and has fun then hits the bar.  It doesn’t work that way for us.  If anything you get that out of your system in the summer.  And then get on with your job.  I am planning a few holidays for my wife and daughter at the end of the season though.”

But there are still good times to be had on the circuit, of course, and Baxter has seen plenty of them.  With a regime and determination to consistently perform and improve, he always has goals to work towards.  However in Sweden in 2001, Alain recalls, he enjoyed a moment that tops all the others.  And this is coming from a man whose career has seen more drama than the Rovers Return, the Woolpack and the Queen Vic combined.  “There is one race that really sticks out in my mind.  It was the year I broke through.  I came from being ranked 55th in the world at the start of the season to finishing 11th at the end.”

Actively reliving the moment in his head as he spoke, Alain continued:  “It was the World Cup finals and I was like ‘OK, I’m here, I’m the first British guy to make this final race.’ I had had a great week’s training before.  I thought ‘I could ski this and come down and have an OK result.  Or I could try and win this thing!’  I came down in 3rd place on the first run, but then I was worrying about the worst thing that could happen. I could go back.  I could make a mistake. So I gave the next run everything, and came 4th.  I didn’t quite make a podium but that was a good feeling.  A good achievement I felt.”

He felt good because he excelled himself.  He forgot the competition, laid his doubts to one side, and performed.  Baxter’s thought processes in his monologue reflects the feelings that go through the mind of any competitor at any level, be it the egg and spoon race or an Olympic final:  The elation, the doubts, the decisions, the risks; “This is the biggest moment of my life.  Do I play it safe or go for the win?  What if I mess up?”

What sets Baxter apart is that he took the risks, made the right decisions, and it paid off.  If he hadn’t done those things, he wouldn’t have gained the reward.  He answered one of the great questions in sport without being asked it.  ‘What if…?’

And has Alain ever had a ‘what if’ moment?  Has he ever questioned himself, his sport, his career, his life?   “There was as time when I was pretty down and felt like finishing the sport.  I was quite young and obviously hadn’t achieved as much as I have now.  The problem was that I was still ranked the best in Britain, but I wasn’t performing to where I thought I should be.  It didn’t feel right.  I was about 23 then, roughly 10 years ago.  I just didn’t want to do it anymore, I’d had enough.”

So what did he do?  “It was hard but I ended up coming back. I got a new coach.  We had a good summer of training, and in the first couple of races back I just got right back up there and started getting stronger and stronger.  And I was at the Olympics the year after.”

And we all know the story from there.  The real story. 

RO

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