Stepping off a plane from Geneva, little Lesley McKenna, Scotland’s greatest snowboarder, smiles as she drags more than her own body weight in luggage towards the airport coffee shop for an interview with In The Winning Zone.  She is home for just a few days before she jets off to another of the world’s great mountain ranges, and we have much to talk about – not least recounting her amazing, personal story of courage, passion and determination that propelled her into the upper echelons of world snowsport.

33 year old Lesley has achieved a lot in her career, including competing at two Winter Olympics – Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006.  But it could have been so different for the Aviemore lass.  When she was a youngster finding her way in snowsport over a decade ago, the challenges she faced sometimes made her think that nothing was working in her favour.

Starting out as a downhill ski-racer in 1989, much like her successful cousins, Alain and Noel Baxter, she competed with the Scottish team for four years, before progressing to spend three further years on the British team – becoming British Champion in 1994. 

If she were the best in Britain at most sports nowadays, Lesley would, of course, have sponsorship and funding coming out of her ears.  But in the mid 90s it seemed to Lesley that no-one was particularly interested in her achievements, and found that pursuing her dream of being a top skier was going to be an obstacle ridden run.  The life of an international ski racer is many things – exciting, dynamic, adventurous – but it isn’t cheap, and money was a serious problem.

“At the time there was very little funding for any sport in Scotland, there wasn’t a Scottish Institute of Sport or anything like that,” recalls Lesley.  “It was really difficult because I had no money at all and I had to work about five jobs. I literally worked all the time - I worked as a waitress, in a bar, taught aerobics and cleaned. I did everything whenever I wasn’t on snow to make ends meet, as well as training four hours a day.”

So here is a young girl, barely out of her teens, trying her best – and succeeding – to become a world class skier, competing in the Europa Cup – one step off the World Cup – at 21 years old.  But yet she received little to no assistance.  Why?

“My collective support network didn’t believe in me,” Lesley explained.  “And a lot of it was down to the fact that they were having massive troubles trying to see how anybody could do anything with the little funds they had, and they were the ones who were doing the budgets.   When you’re 20 or 21 you don’t know anything about budgets, but you can feel when someone’s heart isn’t really in it.  I couldn’t afford to continue on the ski team and I would have had to have gone to the states and joined a club programme.”

So although Lesley was making a success of her chosen sport, she was quickly learning that there were several major factors that could inhibit her from making the next step up to the very best level.  Fortunately, she had a revelation.

“I went snowboarding now and again as a hobby, and I really loved it and thought the people involved in the sport had a great outlook on life.  Then in March 1996 I got hurt skiing and I could not put ski boots on.  I could only put on soft snowboard boots, so I went riding for a month. At the end of the month I was hooked.

“My friends Justin Westcote, Simon Smith and Ross Dempster were snowboarders at the time in Aviemore, and they made it a bet with me that they could get me the same sponsorship for snowboarding as I had for skiing. It was basically free equipment.”

But Lesley had a big choice to make.  Making the jump to snowboarding would mean abandoning the sport she had specialised in.  If she were to take the risk, she knew she was putting her career on the line.  But it was the enthusiasm with which Lesley was approached that hit her the hardest, and it was the same passion that inspired her to make a decision that would change her life.

“It wasn’t so much their bet that spurred me on, it was their belief that I could be a very successful snowboarder that made me take the risk. They were a bunch of people who were prepared to dream a little bit and they realised how hard I worked to get there. It was the attitude that made me change.  I knew I could go with these other people who have so much enthusiasm for boarding.  I could be part of the crowd that makes the sport grow which was so exciting for me. It wasn’t really a difficult choice.

It was a tough slog for Lesley, and unexpectedly she found it difficult to adapt to her new profession.
“I met my good friend and travelling companion Melanie Leando. She really wanted to go and do snowboard World Cups and I thought ‘why not’? So, off we went!  At the start we used to say we were like the 3 legged donkey at a grand national.  A lot of people did laugh at us at first but we were prepared to take it on the chin.”

Even when she was enjoying herself, receiving support and working her hardest, Lesley says it still took her several years to make serious progress in the sport. 

“We learned lots together, and four years later we were both up there in the top five.  Eventually people started to take us seriously when they saw how much we had improved, along with the work that was put it. They also helped out because if they see someone try hard then they want to help them. It doesn’t really happen in a lot of other sports.  So many other coaches from other countries helped us along the way before we even got near to having our own coach!”

Lesley hasn’t looked back since.  And although she admits herself that she didn’t perform to her best at the Olympics in 2006 – where she fell in qualifying – in January this year she finished fourth in the World Cup in the women’s half-pipe, her specialist event.  Freestyle snowboarding has allowed Lesley to express herself much more than she ever could in downhill skiing.

“I’m in a good place at the moment, totally on my own with no coach and with no funding, but I’m really happy and I’m doing really well, and there is a lot to be said for that. My fourth in the World Cup has been my best result for 4 years.”

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